Azari & III - Reckless with your Love

"Reckless with your love / you just give it up / fearless with your life / no one can you trust."

This had been kicking around my ipod for a few months before it occurred to me that it was not an ages-old forgotten house classic, but had only dropped this year. For a song performed in the well-worn archetype of a lover wronged, and using a flawlessly derivative vocal house template, Azari & III's "Reckless with your Love" is shockingly effective and compulsively listenable. It is a sophisticated performance from a vocalist with unusually firm, even radiant self-confidence. But it's not an "I Will Survive" or a "Good Luck," because it's not explicitly about overcoming heartbreak; it's not even about the self. Instead, it's about the other person, and the realization that you don't even have to move on because, in reality, you're the one who dodged a bullet here (whether or not the singer believes himself isn't entirely clear, it should be noted). It's a really enjoyably judgmental song, unashamed in its embrace of queer aesthetics but universal in its expressions of unconcealed disdain.

I also like it a lot more than the somewhat more celebrated (and perhaps musically more 'unique') "Hungry for the Power," a track that seems to imitate an outdated camp sensibility. It's also pretty good, but for some reason -- perfectly expressed by the mid-track rap that dates it almost immediately -- its cheesiness feels like a revivalist's dry performance of cheese. The feeling just isn't there; instead we're left to admire the accuracy and, one suspects, laugh at its source material. Its conflation of 'love' and 'power' is also too generic to feel particularly real, leaving the listener wanting more in the way of specifics. Without details -- how this 'power' is expressed -- it lacks personality.

And personality is ultimately what makes "Reckless" feel so timeless; the singer is precise in his judgment and confident in his resolve ("I get stronger every day") so it feels empowering without even a hint of corny, self-conscious sloganeering. Of course, the track would be unbearable if it didn't feel some sympathy for its subject. The singer's final judgment isn't really all that damning, his subject only guilty of loving people a little bit too readily. When you're the object of that kind of affection, who's gonna say no? This kind of cognitive dissonance perfectly describes my relationship with the song, which should be disdain for its dry revivalism, and is instead reckless attraction.