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A Softer Focus Image
Metascore
82

Universal acclaim - based on 7 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The latest full-length release for the Texas-based experimental artist features contributions from Ben Baker Billington, Alex Cunningham, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart, and Dani Toral.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 7
  3. Negative: 0 out of 7
  1. Apr 19, 2021
    82
    It is the soundtrack to rousay’s year of insularity, isolation, and adaptation, and harmonises beautifully with anyone who’s undergone similar feelings of repression and growth during this period.
  2. Apr 19, 2021
    80
    With Toral's help, rousay has presented a musical vision that is newly inviting while retaining all of the elements that have made her music so special
  3. Apr 19, 2021
    80
    The world is full of beauty and noise, and Claire Rousay has the uncanny ability to translate these disparate elements into a gorgeous, unique musical journey.
  4. Apr 19, 2021
    80
    a softer focus feels like a breakthrough: simultaneously freer and more composed, closer and more abstract, sweeter and more caustic.
  5. Mojo
    May 18, 2021
    80
    Summoning up the warm, intimate glow of a special day located somewhere in the past or up ahead in our unknown future. [Jul 2021, p.85]
  6. Apr 21, 2021
    76
    Nothing is off limits, yet everything works within the context of the album, as rousay unearths modes of expression that make it hard to remember a time when ambient music sounded any differently. Through it all, rousay somehow makes this progression feel completely natural.
  7. May 11, 2021
    75
    Rousay’s field recordings, the fragile spines of these six songs, subconsciously nudge the listener into constructing their own images and interpretation.