![]() ![]() Like any good producer, Streten has an ear for appropriate melodies and more often than not knows when to step back and let Murphy take the spotlight. When Flume's production dominates on Lockjaw, as on "This Song", it disrupts the EP's sultry, slowed-down aesthetic. They work best together when Streten foregrounds Murphy's soulful intonation, which cultivates an intimacy that's made his opening slot on Flume's most recent tour more inviting than the headliner, who keeps graduating to bigger venues and drop-hungry audiences. It's no coincidence that the titular question of that song is a point of contention or forward motion in most relationships, including Flume and Chet Faker's. "What About Us" showcases both artists' ranges, opening with the crackle of an old recording and Murphy's falsetto, eventually incorporating a saxophone bursting forth like an afterthought during the closing piano chords. "Game" is probably the most fully realized track on the EP, complete with a painstakingly stylized video featuring Brooklyn dancer Storyboard P, whose unnervingly fluid stop-motion movements in a deserted nighttime warehouse district is a good visual representation of Flume and Faker's collaborative relationship: he moves to the beat and sometimes mouths Murphy's supple tenor, which catches and flows in all the right places over Streten's stuttering drums. Despite Streten's insistence that the songs aren't like anything either has done before, not to mention both artists’ versatility-Flume remixes bangers for Mad Decent as easily as he builds pretty, twinkling tracks like “Star Eyes”, and Murphy adeptly covers both “No Diggity” and “Archangel”- Lockjaw succeeds when it doesn’t stray far from the template set by “Left Alone”. Streten hasn't ruled out the possibility of a future album with Murphy, and the excellent singles "Drop the Game" and "What About Us" give listeners an idea of what that would look like. Still, Lockjaw is a solid statement of intent. The Postal Service imitation "This Song Is Not About A Girl" (the title says it all, but the briskly driving hi-hats and light vocal effects certainly don’t help) is the EP's only misstep, which admittedly means more in the context of three songs than it would on a full-length. ![]()
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