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MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)

Listen to your body tonight. They made themselves up, and they're strictly for real.

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The Phoenix

The lyrics run, uh, let’s say straightforward, but Black Kids know as well as any good sentimentalists that delivery is everything; teenage yearning couldn’t hope for a much better vehicle than their pouting power pop.

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Entertainment Weekly

Yet for all their more ridiculous tendencies, Youngblood and Co. have a real knack for crafting achingly romantic synth-pop tunes in the vein of the Cure and the Psychedelic Furs.

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Filter

Reggie Youngblood's honest and witty dialogue of jealousy, loniness, and egotism vents interior frustrations while the other Kids synthesize sulk along the way. [Summer 2008, p.97]]

Spin

Kissing goodbye to the obsolete racial and gender roles that pop, hip-hop, or indie rock still demand, Youngblood and pals throw a thrillingly subversive victory party to lift the country out of eight years of anguish.

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Observer Music Monthly

The Florida band's music is pleasingly random, too. One minute they're new romantics or dour indie kids, then, before youve had a chance to draw breath, they're apeing the Ronettes.

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Observer Music Monthly

The Florida band's music is pleasingly random, too. One minute they're new romantics or dour indie kids, then, before youve had a chance to draw breath, they're apeing the Ronettes.

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Urb

Black Kids' conviction and raw talent has made for a record that far outshines a majority of their blog brethren. [Jul/Aug 2008, p.84]

Billboard

The group's rocket ride appears to have preserved its more appealingly eccentric tendencies: frontman Reggie Youngblood's ridiculous yelp of a singing voice, for instance, or Dawn Watley's ultra-cheesy synth lines, which quote pretty much every new wave hit of the '80s.

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Slant Magazine

Black Kids merits your attention, and Partie Traumatic is a confident, fun debut.

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musicOMH.com

Pay no attention to the hype--after all, it didn't do Vampire Weekend any harm--and sit back and listen to one of the most purely enjoyable albums of this year.

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New Musical Express

Partie Traumatic is the sexiest, most outrageous outright pop album of ’08 so far, hard not to love and (seemingly) even easier to lay.

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The Guardian

Almost everything here sounds like a hit waiting to happen, equipped with a tune strong enough to be heard above the hype--or the hype about the hype or the people complaining about the hype about the hype--and memorable enough to make the idea that Black Kids will be forgotten by Christmas seem a highly unlikely suggestion

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Hot Press

Youngbloods triumph with unpretentious pop.

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Mojo

The space disco of 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again)' and Listen To Your Body Tonight' are destines for repeat plays on this summer's festival circuit. [Aug 2008, p.106]

Q Magazine

The truth is that Youngblood writes terrific, instantly memorable pop songs, their fashionable new-wave cool rubbing against an urgent, almost disco undertow. [Aug 2008, p.141]

All Music Guide

Partie Traumatic is a very good debut that manages to earn a huge chunk of the hype that was thrown willy-nilly in the band's direction.

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NOW Magazine

While they could tone down the synth on their next effort, this disc definitely lives up to the hype.

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Paste Magazine

Moving basslines and driving, bouncy drumming run under brass backing, bright keys and group-sung vocal harmonies throughout Partie Traumatic's joyous entirety.

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The New York Times

Black Kids’ peppy songs juggle yelpy Cure-style lead vocals, beats from the intersection of new wave and disco, wordplay (“Hit the Heartbrakes,” “I get angst in my pants”), comic synthesizer squeals and, under it all, enough ache to justify all that desperate sublimation.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

None of it is revolutionary, and all of it is so steeped in early-'80s new wave that it's tempting to dismiss Black Kids as mere revivalists. But their revisions have verve.

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Village Voice

As far as eagerly anticipated debuts go, Partie Traumatic is loose and unforced in its extreme eagerness to please.

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Blender

Youngblood's tunes are so clever it's easy to overlook the commitment to new wave it took for him to avoid wasting his love of wordplay on folk music. [Aug 2008, p.84]

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Rolling Stone

With Brit-pop vet Bernard Butler behind the decks, these Floridians still toss out an impressive 10-song party grenade.

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Alternative Press

The underwhelming title cut underscores the superiority of the first four Black Kids songs, but their transition from MySpace to major label is an overall success. [Sep 2008, p.162]

Uncut

There's some interesting things going on here.... Sadly, Bernard Butler's production often feels thin and tinny, which isn't just sad, but avoidable, too. [Aug 2008, p.92]

Prefix Magazine

The Black Kids may only have one trick, but as long as they only pull it at a house party, it’s the only one they’ll need.

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Boston Globe

While there's a certain bubblegum synth-pop allure and cheeky lyrical irony in songs like 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again),' it's hard to find ourselves being carried away on youthful pluck and preciousness alone.

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Drowned In Sound

This debut--while not a technically poor album, boasting as it does pop hooks aplenty if you truly focus in, beyond the sometimes irritating vocal tennis--sags where it should soar, dips where it should peak.

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PopMatters

While Youngblood fills his sardonic twinkle with playful sexual allusions and gender ambiguity, there’s too many clunky lines and rhymes-for-rhyming’s sake for Partie Traumatic to be anything more than lyrically intriguing.

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Under The Radar

From start to finish, they slather Partie Traumatic in quirk and tirelessly recycle the scrappy sonics of 'I'm Not Gonna Teach,' playing them out until even that gem of a single loses its luster. [Fall 2008, p.79]

cokemachineglow

This is nothing even remotely new, but very rarely does it come off so obnoxiously, indelibly built to not be taken seriously when that’s the very action that could save these assholes from their own doom.

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Sputnikmusic

Black Kids are trying too hard, plain and simple.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 33 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jimmie A. gave it a9:
To bad that no new songs appeared on this one, but there are so many great songs that you don't mind hearing them over and over again.

Brian S. gave it an8:
Derivative, yes. I hear influences from The Cure (the singer actually sounds a bit like Robert Smith), Prince and nearly every power pop band that ever existed. Is it a Blonde on Blonde, Sgt. Peppe, Marquee Moon or Nevermind? Of course not, but the songs are catchy and fun. The perfect summer record.

Christopher L. gave it a10:
The Blacks Kids debut full length is undoubtedly a departure from their darker versions of the music presented in the free wizard e.p. ,as far as production. You have to give it a second listen!!! This is an awesome album that only suffers from preconcocted notions of what you THOUGHT they were gonna do. Once you can let this album be judged on its own merit, watch out haters, this could easily be the first round knock out punch album of the year, with the black kids working their magic in an astounding 38 minutes. Wow!!! Time flies when your having fun.

Jacob Reynolds gave it an8:
They've done a great record But the post production just makes its sound not nearly as good as "wizard of ahhs".

Mando A. gave it a10:
Awesome record, one of the few I can listen to in it's entirety without ever skipping a track. The perfect summer pop album.

David H. gave it an8:
Catchy tunes with some references to the 80's make this album an easy-to-listen one.

Daniel C. gave it a5:
Uh, no. This band was overhyped from the get go and, although they may have shown a little promise on their free ep, the dazzling production ect. gets them nowhere. I'm not sure why the critics scored it so high, especially considering the apologetic tone in their reviews. This album is utterly disposable, though it's good for maybe two spins.

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Partie Traumatic

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