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Apr 26, 2013Despite his delicate--make that dainty--designs, Henson also knows how to set a fanciful mood, albeit one that’s singularly subdued.
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Apr 19, 2013While the album’s rustic first half simmers the songwriter with the myriad Jeff Buckley and Justin Vernon comparisons, it’s the last seven tracks where Henson embraces the exploratory nature of a second album.
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Apr 15, 2013Birthdays is the kind of record you’re not likely to let go of easily and in coming times it’s likely to be a touchstone recording for a number of singer-songwriters and a measuring stick for critics.
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UncutMar 13, 2013This follow-up to last year's impressive debut, Dear, is no less musically intense or lyrically unflinching, but now Henson's quavering anxiety has flesh on its bones. [Mar 2013, p.]
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Mar 13, 2013Blessed with a beautiful, halting falsetto and a way with words, he is a very sad man, and this is a very sad album. It will make you want to lie down in the dark for a while and think about things.
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Mar 13, 2013Henson spends 20-odd minutes working his tremulous voice--somewhere between Paul Simon and Wayne Coyne--around echoing guitar.... Then suddenly he finds the socket and ‘Don’t Swim’ rages into life, his guitar bashed and throttled.
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Q MagazineMar 13, 2013It's a transformation that makes the delicate beauty of what comes before even more startling. [Mar 2013, p.102]
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Mar 13, 2013[Dear's] followup offers more of the same, but with studio polish.
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Mar 13, 2013These spare, bluesy arrangements don't always sustain the mood, occasionally drifting towards torpor, despite cathartic bursts of noise on Don't Swim and Kronos.
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Mar 13, 2013The album isn’t easy going: it’s hard to completely love a record as bleak as this.... but Henson has a poet’s way with words and an expressive voice that you’d never tire of listening to.
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Mar 13, 2013There’s no better way to shut out the din than by putting this record on.
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Mar 13, 2013It will inspire obsessive fandom and moisten a few eyes, but Henson’s voice is something of an acquired taste.
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Mar 13, 2013An often spectacular document of pain, no doubt, but it remains a record to admire rather than invest in, turning you away with its bleakness when it promises comfort
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Mar 13, 2013Birthdays is so fragile and broken that listening to it without signing some kind of non-disclosure agreement feels borderline voyeuristic.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 12
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Mixed: 1 out of 12
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Negative: 0 out of 12
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Jul 25, 2013
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Apr 16, 2013