Summer is waning, but fighting back against the impending winter is Futures, the new single from Zero 7, or more specifically Zero 7 featuring José Gonzalez, who is a regular contributor to their recent album. His effort is a floating, soft acoustic-feel song that seems perfect for a lazy summer afternoon, tinged with an interesting mixture of melancholic sounding lyrics and upbeat melody.
And I have to say that the only problems I can see with the song are part and parcel of its major benefit- it's a perfect summer song. So that, by definition, means that it's not really a song for those rainy winter months that we all know are knocking on the door now (or, for some areas of the country, are in the process of wiping their feet and getting properly settled in). That I'm talking about weather so much also implies the other problem- it feels as though it lacks real substance. For what is really a quite short song a good deal of it is taken up by odd over-production style sounds rather than music, which takes away from Gonzalez' singing (although this might be somewhat a moot-point given that Zero 7 has two producers at its core).
Don't get me wrong, the portion of the track with actual singing is truly lovely, akin to something The Shins would be proud of, and the problems I'm finding are mostly knit-picking in an otherwise solid song. Overall it's defiantly worth a listen, though whether that's down to Zero 7 or their guest is a matter for debate.
more 