Numb

"Numb" opens Luxury Problems at 6:30, written and produced by Andy Stott with vocals by Alison Skidmore. It was released first as a stream ahead of the album; Beats Per Minute's Will Ryan reviewed it on October 9, 2012, giving 8 out of 10, and described an opening that is downright gentle, at first at least, and beautiful, whispers chopped into decaying overlapping repetition, and a cycling sub-bass throb near the midpoint. The Quietus describes an opening with a reverb-heavy vocal and a monolithic stomp arriving about 2:24.

PopMatters's Timothy Gabriele wrote that the kicks attempt to jackhammer the voice's tenderness into the molten earth, and that the vocal turns from torture porn into a forlorn elegy. FACT compares the breathy female voice over a looped pulse to Flying Lotus's "Roberta Flack" and Zomby and Reark's "Natalia's Song", and Stereogum's Ted Davis wrote in 2022 that it could practically pass for an outtake from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless; Juno's Richard Brophy also heard Loveless elements, per Wikipedia.

We could not verify the song's live play count (setlist.fm's song table did not load), covers, samples, video or chart history, and found nothing about our upload beyond its being the album track.