Pitchfork

Adam "Doseone" Drucker has hinted at a more pop-friendly direction for his anticon.-and-pals trans-genre supergroup Subtle, but times are just about mixed-up enough for pop-skewing indie (and vice-versa) that such a declaration could mean just about anything. If you don't feel entirely comfortable creating a "???" genre tag in your MP3 collection, you might want to designate "Unlikely Rock Shock" as "electro," even if its percussion is straight-up live drumming: there's a half-acid synth wobble that takes up most of the bassline duties, and the hook for this is all short, sharp party-rock chants that sound just about ready to be fed into a vocoder. It could also fall under the indie rap rubric; Doseone's mosquito-buzz voice delivers the first verse in this low, fast-rap grumble that sounds a bit like Lyrics Born though clenched teeth. Then again, you might as well tag it with the same thing you tag your Gnarls Barkley MP3s with, since Doseone eventually slips back into that familiar hallucinogenic Cee-lo wheeze of his, and with a dance groove as insistent as this behind him it's never sounded more radio-ready.

MP3:> Subtle: "Unlikely Rock Shock"
[from ExitingARM; due 05/13/08 from Lex]