By Kavit Sumud | February 21st, 2013
Rhye‘s original version of “Open“ was the most comforting aural orgasm to come out last year. It was like satin sheets dripping with afterglow wrapped around your head that cooed a set of breathless, sweet nothings into your ear. That was especially true if you watched the softcore video that accompanied the track.
Still, it all felt a little suffocating to me. Like entry into the intimacy of the singer’s bedroom hadn’t produced the intended sweetness he desired, but instead straddled the line into the effusively maudlin. Maybe I’m cold like that, but I love Ryan Hemsworth’s expansive version for taking the song out of the boudoir.
Hemsworth’s rendition feels like a saucy tango through the nighttime streets of an urban center. Capitalizing on the tension of the song, his edits accentuate the longing, but punctuate it with a sense of desperate worry — like at any moment a stoplight, an unexpected bit of traffic, or a drunken wrong turn could thwart your sexy tete-a-tete in the making. By expanding the world the song can take place in, the mawkish nature of the original track is resolved and gives the track a very modern romance feel with a future sound.