SUGABABES | Ace Reject

REVIEWS:
x The simple guitar lick builds with accompanying piano and synths on the bridges with Mutya's vocals, followed by wistful instrumental breaks. It builds into a soulful pop song eventually, it's a slow burner. The synth in the chorus sounds sweet, but effective. The middle section is soulful and builds back into the bridge. Lyrically the theme is all about a relationship that's on and off and the frustrations that brings. The structure and production are spot on. Daniel Gee

x (...) half-the-song-title does win the truth in advertising award, because the song is indeed ace. (�) It's in some ways made up of bits from other songs, so perhaps the title is appropriate after all. It starts with a wocka-wocka rhythm that is like a slowed-down version of the one backing Moonbaby's/Lene Nystrom's/Girls Aloud's "Here We Go," and the synthesizer riff of the chorus is somewhat reminiscent of the beep-beep-beep bit in the chorus of Saint Etienne's "Burnt Out Car." Since these are all Xenomania productions, they're not stealing (BAD!), just quoting themselves (POMO!).
Even the chorus of "Ace Reject," with the by now patentable Sugababes style in which they sing a rushed jumble of words, harkens back to "Angels With Dirty Faces." That chorus is a thing of beauty, made more so because it takes forever to announce itself as a chorus. (Apparently an earlier version of the track that was leaked has a different structure; I wouldn't know, since I only listen to official releases.) After the first verse, the song goes into two iterations of something ("wasting time..."), and at first we can't at first tell if it's a refrain or a chorus. When we get through with them, we don't in fact get a proper chorus, just a catchy but fairly buried synthesizer riff. Oh. I guess that "wasting time" bit was the chorus then. Meh.
The song next turns back around and heads into another verse, and then into what we at this point are resigned to considering as the chorus. But finally, finally, this time when these bits end, the 'Babes start singing along with the keyboard riff: "We break up and make it up/Back and forth we never stop/Every time a change of heart/I can�t keep up." It's sung rapid-fire, as if the melody can barely contain the girls' emotions. Because we waited so long for this glorious chorus, we are rewarded with another round: "You say yes and I say no/When it turns hot we make it cold/And still something between us holds us together." And if all this weren't enough, everything then slows down for a refrain which has the song's more poetic lines ("Ain't it funny how sweet I dream, but the bed keeps on getting colder/Sometimes when I close my eyes, it feels like I'm living by numbers"). It's another example of Xenomania experimenting with the structure of the pop song, so for god's sake, keep up.
Brittle-Lemon