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The album is mostly about emotion and expressing emotion, and finding the right driving piano hooks and reverbing guitar chords to enhance such feelings. All of which means that Beyond the Neighbourhood is not particularly extraordinary.
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The self-produced Beyond The Neighbourhood balances its meat and veg indie with enough electronic textures and hip hop beats to (sort of) catch the ear.
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Again Athlete have purported a musical equivalent to a blank stare. It is there, it may intend to disperse meaning, but in the end it does nothing much, if anything at all. Blah, indeed.
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It sounds like the work of a band who are simply trying to get their feelings off their chest, rather than one trying to sell records.
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As you listen to Beyond the Neighbourhood, you find yourself spending an awful lot of time asking yourself whether you're feeling anything yet.
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There aren't too many instances of musical weakness on the record, though a few tracks are mediocre in comparison with the album's most winning moments.
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UncutTheir third album is sprinkled with sensitive instrumental textures and plaintive tinkling noises, but their music remains utterly devoid of personality, not least because of Joel Potts' vapid vocals, while not even the best efforts of Gil Grissom and his eager CSIs could unearth a sniff of a decent tune. [Oct 2007, p.83]
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Athlete's third effort Beyond The Neighbourhood goes some way to restoring their initial well-deserved kudos.
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Q MagazineThe result is a too quiet, curiously unfinished-sounding album with barely a moment to remember, let alone cherish. [Oct 2007, p.96]
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Under The RadarAs talented as these guys are, they still can't write a song that stays with you. [Fall 2007, p.78]
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Beyond The Neighbourhood isn't Athlete's triumph, but with far more rock moments, spacey sounds and well-placed hooks, as on the driving anthem Hurricane and the dreamy Airport Disco, they've redeemed themselves a little.
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Mired in the generic neo-new-wave and self-consciously emotive yawn of contemporary fashion indie rock, Athlete's unimaginative music matches up nicely with the shallow lyrics.
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Beyond the Neighbourhood is the sonic equivalent of a beautiful coffin.
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Beyond the Neighborhood is somewhere in between, melding studio tweakery with the kind of sweeping melodies that never seem to go out of fashion.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 18
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Mixed: 3 out of 18
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Negative: 0 out of 18
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Jul 1, 2013
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DavesOct 25, 2007Strange...i read really good reviews for this in the observer, mojo and time out. Why are these not included? great album.
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GarryK.Oct 18, 2007