Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Feb 11, 2013The music on Big Inner is so wondrous that it seems entirely obvious that we’ll always find that peace, joy and contentment in music rather than anywhere else.
-
MojoFeb 6, 2013A debut album of psychedelic gospel-tinged gems. [Mar 2013, p.94]
-
Feb 1, 2013Overall, Matthew E White and his Spacebomb house band have created a brilliant debut, one that will undoubtedly have artists queueing up to be a part of this newly established project.
-
Jan 28, 2013Many have tried to recreate the vibrancy and laidback groove of vintage soul-pop, but to absolutely nail it you need to be someone truly cosmic. Amy Winehouse just about managed it, and Matthew E White is one other such person.
-
Q MagazineJan 24, 2013Funneling psychedelic sounds through soulful gospel has long been a musical quest.... Matthew E. White's band have nailed the gig with their first experiment. [Feb 2013, p.106]
-
Jan 22, 2013He's made one of the great albums of modern Americana, and one suspects that a reluctant star is born.
-
Jan 22, 2013A genuine classic, in fact.
-
Jan 22, 2013For all the 40-year-old reference points, Big Inner never feels like a pastiche; it's audibly more than the sum of its influences, in the same manner as Lambchop's Nixon.
-
Jan 22, 2013Over seven elegant tracks, White and his musicians achieve the kinds of loveliness that Spiritualized, Lambchop, Cat Power and the Beta Band have tilted at, at different times in the past, and quite often missed.
-
Jan 22, 2013White's own voice lacks the character to drive his songs, but Big Inner is a hugely impressive debut nonetheless.
-
Aug 29, 2012A dramatic pop-gospel record that hits extremes of the mood spectrum: very easygoing and very obsessive.
-
Aug 29, 2012Instead of feeling like a testing ground for a series of wild experiments, White has crafted a collection of hushed character sketches worthy of Randy Newman or Bill Callahan.
-
Aug 29, 2012White's gift on Big Inner is taking sounds created by actual southerners and turning them into figments of his musical imagination, which he bends and shapes into bottomless columns of ethereal soul.
-
Aug 29, 2012Big Inner is a brilliant debut, brimming with homages to pop music's past, whether it be Motown or Randy Newman.
-
Aug 29, 2012It's sometimes silly but also undeniably soothing.
-
Aug 29, 2012There were many musical spirits in the room when White and his Spacebomb band went to recording the seven farmhouse-soul spirituals found on Big Inner, but what ultimately renders this record truly special is the band's ability to synthesize all these elements into something that is uniquely their own.
-
Aug 29, 2012This is gospel-smacked, laidback music, tinseled by horns and strings and grounded in a big, big love.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 7 out of 7
-
Mixed: 0 out of 7
-
Negative: 0 out of 7
-
Jun 1, 2013
-
Mar 11, 2015
-
Oct 7, 2012