Review
Genre and Mood
Say Yes Dog made Feel Better an openly cheerful single from their second album: synth-pop and electro-pop with an indie-pop heart, upbeat, playful and feel-good by intention. Reviewers in 2019 kept returning to the same two things, a catchy electronic sound and its 1980s aesthetic, and the band dressed the song in a video that refuses to take any of it too seriously.
Song Summary
Feel Better is the sixth of the ten tracks on Voyage, released on 10 May 2019 by Diskodogs Records, and in June it became the album’s third single; Wikipedia lists Deep Space and Lies as the band’s other singles of 2019. Circuit Sweet read it as a summary of the record’s message: the band have travelled a long way and are now exactly where they should be, in their own galaxy of electro-pop. The title is the song’s promise, and the chorus is built to keep it.
Musical Breakdown
No source maps Feel Better section by section, so this page follows only what the reviews describe and leaves the rest to your ears.
Verses
The verses carry Aaron Ahrends’ voice over the trio’s rhythm section, Paul Rundel on bass and Pascal Karier on drums, with the electronic sound that every review of the single called catchy.
Chorus
The chorus holds the hook, the line Adam Sait suggested turning into a liberating mantra for the video. Its job is to be repeated, and the song gives it the space to be.
Concepts in Focus
A hook is the part of a song that catches you and will not let go, and here it is the chorus. Sait’s idea of treating it as a mantra is a good description of how any pop hook works: a short phrase, repeated until it changes the mood of the person singing it.
The music video, directed by Sait, was the band’s attempt to add a second visual layer to an upbeat track. They let him follow his own instincts instead of pushing their original vision, and called the result a silly, dopey representation of the song; better, they said, not to take yourself too seriously than to build an overly constructed image of yourself and your song.
The synthesizer is what gives the trio its 1980s colour. With only voice, bass and drums in the line-up, the electronic parts supply the sheen that reviewers heard as a decade’s aesthetic.
Artistic Context
Say Yes Dog are a German-Luxembourgish trio: Ahrends and Rundel grew up in Berlin, Karier comes from Luxembourg, and they met studying sound engineering and jazz at the conservatory in The Hague. Their first EP, Say Yes Dog – A Friend, came out in 2013 and their debut album, Plastic Love, in 2015. Voyage was their second album.
Impact and Reception
British music blogs covered the single in June 2019, as the band set out on a tour of festivals and clubs from the Netherlands to Russia, the Czech Republic included, shortly after a run supporting Fil Bo Riva. A Song A Day Keeps The Doctor Away called them underrated. Watch the video, then try to stop humming the chorus.
