Metascore
81

Universal acclaim - based on 12 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 12
  2. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Oct 15, 2013
    90
    From the brash, banging tracks all the way to the idyllic soft touches, Beautiful Rewind is captivating and completely refreshing to hear.
  2. It sprawls and can feel tenuous, even precipitously close to collapse under its own weight, but the moment of calamity never arrives. It stands instead as a monument not to the person who has erected it, but to the multitudinous influences that brought it into being.
  3. Oct 15, 2013
    80
    Even though Beautiful Rewind is a call to dance music's past, it's the contemporary, more experimental sounds that establish the album as a standout in both the Four Tet oeuvre and a growing collection of dance albums that pay homage to the past.
  4. Oct 14, 2013
    80
    While the album does seem rather patched together with a lack of focus--it plays out like a pair of distinct EPs and a couple transitional orphans on shuffle--there's an irrefutable charm to the restlessness.
  5. Oct 14, 2013
    80
    An (almost) unexpected pleasure.
  6. Oct 14, 2013
    80
    Thankfully, he's enough of a careful, diligent, and experienced artist to make even the lackluster experiments feel vital and significant in the larger scope of his oeuvre.
  7. Oct 10, 2013
    80
    In general, the album's tracks take more risks, and surprise in a way that we've not quite heard from Hebden before.
  8. Oct 10, 2013
    80
    At times it’s a strange record. The rough tones don’t register as forcefully as the hooks on previous works. That said, it’s a rewarding listen, one that eventually embeds itself once given full attention.
  9. Oct 10, 2013
    80
    Beautiful Rewind is the sound of an artist looking to cut loose, and its playful spirit proves catching.
  10. Oct 15, 2013
    70
    Admittedly, Beautiful Rewind isn’t Kieran Hebden’s magnum opus, but it’s an album that succeeds at both moving the listener emotionally and, like much of the producer’s impressive body of work, inspiring him or her to literally and physically move.
  11. Oct 10, 2013
    70
    There’s certainly nothing on Beautiful Rewind with a hook as memorable as ‘Locked’, from last year’s Pink. When Four Tet hits that sweet spot between fragile beauty and gritty pirate radio music (as on the aforementioned ‘Aerial’ and ‘Buchla’, for instance) however, you really feel as if he’s onto something.
  12. 58
    As with The King of the Limbs, Beautiful Rewind is always keeping us at arm’s length, coldly allowing us to admire the craft without letting us in on the secret. It can make for a lonely listen.
User Score
7.3

No user score yet- Awaiting 1 more rating

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. Oct 16, 2013
    7
    One or two genuine club thumpers make this Four Tet's funnest album to date. Had he stayed in the same beat-y kind of vein, the album would have been close to epic. Full Review »