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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Let It Come Down
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 21 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Arista
Release Date: 25 September 2001
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Alternative, Pop, Rock
Summary
Over two years in the making, 'Let It Come Down' is the UK band's first album of new material in four years. It utilizes over 100 musicians (including an orchestra and choral singers), although the music was entirely written and arranged by guitarist Jason Pierce.
Also By This Artist: Amazing Grace Songs in A&E
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
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...
Entertainment Weekly
A big, lumbering, and often uplifting symphonic-rock piece about being a wastrel, it's as if Brian Wilson had made ''Pet Sounds'' a decade later in the midst of his bedridden, drug-addled despondency.
Read Full Review >Playlouder
It's a huge album, a beautiful album, a witty album, and above all, a Spiritualized album, through and through. If you like Spiritualized albums, you will love 'Let It Come Down'. If you don't, it may be time for a rethink.
Read Full Review >Dot Music
You could get lost for days in the depths of these arrangements, and still find something moving and transcendental at every gilded turn. It's a towering achievement...
Read Full Review >New Musical Express
'Let It Come Down' is another towering achievement - both musically and emotionally.... This is music as it's meant to be: raw, colossal and awe-inspiring. No wonder everything else just pales in comparison.
Read Full Review >Spin Cycle
Pierce enhances his trademark electro-scapes with rich gospel choruses and grand orchestral flourishes for operatic effect.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
Granted, a few tracks here require perhaps too much patience, or never peak as one might expect, or are overburdened with sound. But even these lesser tracks contain the simple, yet stunning affirmations that make Pierce so engaging.
Read Full Review >Blender
Brings Pierce's preoccupation with panoramic emotional and chemical excess to startling, transcendent climax. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.112]
Sonicnet
On Let It Come Down, Jason Pierce successfully peels away layers of pretension and exposes the humanity at the heart of his music.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
What at first, certainly compared to its startling predecessor, feels like a retreat from modern music’s radical frontline (nasty jazz, electronica, noise) gradually unfolds to offer equally interesting new ways of hearing.
Read Full Review >CDNow
Let It Come Down, might well contain the most potent feel-good music he's yet crafted.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
Let It Come Down is another masterfully made Spiritualized album, but its very ambitions sometimes overwhelm it.
Read Full Review >Neumu.net
As if its size alone weren't enough to set the album apart from his preceding Spiritualized outings, Pierce has removed all the sounds he thought were immediately identifiable as Spiritualized -- delay, phase, Telecaster, Farfisa -- and left the songs as largely orchestral numbers.
Read Full Review >Village Voice
Spiritualized's latest aural triumph... In truth, half of Let It Come Down is just sludgy crap, but the half of the chalice that's full truly runneth over into the realm of, um, the awe-inspiring. If not the sublime.
Read Full Review >The Wire
Let It Come Down suffers just a little from Pierce's presumably healthier outlook. [#211, p.66]
Billboard
Even visionaries lose sight at times, as Pierce does on "Let It Come Down," an album that can only be deemed a fractured opus.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
The chasm between his musical and lyrical ambitions is as amusing as it is frustrating.
Read Full Review >Alternative Press
An ambitious record that pays skillful tribute to teachers like Pink Floyd, but shows off its ambition too much. [Nov 2001, p.94]
Mojo
It is an unconvincing record as a whole, and parts of it are profoundly dull. [Oct 2001, p.124]
Austin Chronicle
Pierce shows neither the vocal presence nor the songwriting chops to justify Let It Come Down's bloated orchestral excess.
Read Full Review >Spin
Pierce's flimsy voice and material buckle under the weight of the Technicolor bombast on Let It Come Down. [Oct 2001, p.127]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jon L gave it a10:
The best Spiritualized album, period. Bombastic, yes, but rather than crushing the confessional songwriting of Pierce, it transcends it, and the emotional impact is stunning. Too bad Amazing Grace couldn't live up to it...
North Freedom Fighter gave it a9:
Overwhelming, ambitious and absolutely empowering. This albums is the great work of a man who is not afraid to dive into his pretention to deliver what he feels the world needs to hear. Utterly brilliant
Travis gave it a9:
just when you thought you couldn't go any deeper down with 'ladies...', we have it neatly bookended with this beautiful walk out of the dark and into the light. Stunning, gorgeous.
Travis gave it a 3:
i really just don't understand how it could have gone so damn wrong. there seem to be only two songs on this album - the rehashed versions of 'electricity', and downright boring dirges, cleaved in the middle by a merely passable exercise in free-jazz. it's horrible. the absolute worst spiritualized album.
ihty andr gave it a 9:
Number one album of the 2001 for russian poetic soul. haven & heaven for me. its really narcotic from pierce.
Mac M. gave it a 9:
Drugged up, fucked up, broken up, loved up, busted up... Just stunning.
Pedro K. gave it a 10:
Brilliant work! This is am awesome record, every song has its different pace and meaning, everything it is at its right place. The sound is just so powerfull and clean. Even better than Ladies/albert Hall.
