Late Night Feelings

In the solid Late Night Feelings, sadness is more than an abstraction here: it's multifaceted, multilayered and mellifluous melancholy.

Ronson’s ability to tap into each artist’s strengths and dig out their particular prowess allows each voice to shine through and own each individual track. This is what elevates the record to a guaranteed award winner and a truly empowering listen.

One could get away with lazily DJ-ing a late-night party by hitting play and letting Late Night Feelings run all the way through, a possibility that attests to the record’s consistency and the comfort it offers despite its darker themes.

Individual songs don’t matter quite so much as the overriding mood. Compared with the brash appeal of Uptown Funk, I’m not sure you could really describe these as bangers. They are more like Catherine wheels spitting flames into the night before burning out. And all the lovelier for it.

A record that pushes each of its contributors to stamp their own mark, uniting them under the banner of heartbreak but leaving room for each vocalist to twist the blueprint to their own shape.

There are some total gems on ‘Late Night Feelings’, which are occasionally marred by a handful of sleepy filler tracks. But in general Mark Ronson’s immense talent as both a producer and songwriter shines through. It’s bold, brilliant and genuinely interesting pop music.

Overall, this is one of Ronson's best works--a complete pop album.

The emotional cohesion the record loses in its shifting cast of singers/songwriters/genres it makes up in DJ-savvy textural variety.

Feelings all goes down easily, but Ronson’s own creative DNA remains a mystery. This isn’t his manifesto; it’s a mixtape.

Late Night Feelings is not the first recent record to treat the sadness of women as a healthy response to all manner of hurt. It is, however, a worthy entry in this still-developing pop pantheon, authentic and honest in its rendering of many shades of feminine sorrow.

Late Night Feeling is the better album [than 2015's Uptown Special] — rangy, sexy and fairly seamless, an LP to play all the way through after a night of clubbing if you happen get lucky, or if you don’t. If there’s a problem, it’s songwriting and processed vocals that can feel anonymous; bold-faced names lost in string arrangements, pillowy reverb and period simulacra in a way the singers on Daft Punk’s like-minded Random Access Memories managed to avoid.

Contributions from Angel Olsen and newcomer YEBBA may be more subtle, but reveal themselves to be the real hidden diamonds. [Aug 2019, p.36]

Ronson’s Achilles heel is, as ever, making everything feel as if it’s been endlessly worked on: his obsessional qualities can cloud the magic of the best pop. But equally, that craft is what songs blaring from iPhones sometimes lack.

There is a slight trophy cupboard quality to Ronson's accumulation of contributors but the conception, if not the feeling, is impeccable as ever. [Jul 2019, p.93]

He's smart to pair Angel Olsen with a beat from the understated end of Queen's playbook, but it doesn't always work with Camila Cabello sounding oddly generic on Find U Again. [Summer 2019, p.116]