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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
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Is A Woman
by Lambchop
Kurt Wagner & co. return for the band's sixth album, which is a more stripped-down affair than their previous effort, 'Nixon.'
| LABEL: |
Merge |
| RELEASE DATE: |
19 February 2002 |
| DISCS: |
1 disc |
| GENRE(S): |
Indie, Rock, Alt-Country, Pop |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Uncut
Another mature masterpiece from America's finest. [Album Of The Month, March 2002, p.94]
100
Playlouder
Minimal and huge at the same time, desperately sad in places, thought-provoking and ethereal in others, this is an incredible milestone of a record.
90
Ink Blot Magazine
Every song contains four or five things that will just whip your head around in disbelief.
90
Nude As The News
For all its minimalist musical approach and inherent gloominess, Is A Woman over time proves a creative masterstroke.
80
Magnet
This soggy, after-hours feel also permeates Is A Woman, although the ensemble sound has been pared to the bone. [#53, p.83]
80
Dot Music
'Is A Woman' is a deep, rewarding, frustrating, baffling, engaging experience then, an album that drifts away from you just when you're getting hold of it.
80
All Music Guide
By focusing less on quotidian (i.e., boring) experiences of the proletariat and more on less-tangible allusions to death, troubled romance, and loneliness, Wagner's music is simply more approachable and meaningful, if still hard to puzzle out in its specific intent.
80
PopMatters
A strange delight of a record.
80
Neumu.net
Lounge-rock for world-weary sophisticates.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
As an experiment in consistency, Woman is an unqualified success, but it's hard not to occasionally miss the unpredictability of the past.
80
Blender
What Led Zeppelin did for bombast, Lambchop try to do for delicacy. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]
80
Alternative Press
It's clever, literate and pretty, but also boring as hell if you don't flip off the lights, clamp on your headphones and concentrate. [May 2002, p.88]
80
New Musical Express
It's a brave and curious record that, as on 'Bugs', occasionally resembles Willie Nelson fronting Labradford.
80
The Wire
A record that urges you to lean closer to the speakers in order to fully hear everything that is being played and sung. [#216, p.63]
80
Splendid
The album sounds full whether you're in the next room or sitting right beside the speakers. Details -- a horn here, a steel guitar there, a lilting piano figure that appears out of the ether -- fill every cranny in a sound that's still as spacious as Giant Sand's Southwestern soundtracks.
70
Mojo
These gradual pleasures fly in the face of today's pop/rock hardsell, for sure, but inexorably you are drawn into Kurt's world. [Mar 2002, p.100]
60
Spin
Is a Woman finds Lambchop turning into America's Tindersticks, replacing songcraft with baroque digressions. [Mar 2002, p.134]
60
Rolling Stone
With repeated listens, what feels at first like unmelodic obduracy reveals some hidden charms.
60
Trouser Press
While hardly bad... the album too often sounds as if the ceaseless invention that made Nixon so vibrant has been replaced by self-consciousness of the wrong sort.
58
Pitchfork
Is a Woman is a disappointment.
40
Q Magazine
One very minimal idea being stretched over 11 songs to the point that it starts to look very washed-out indeed.
The average user rating for this album is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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