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While nearly any song on Burn the Maps works effectively, the album as a whole can't quite maintain its momentum with such structural repetition.
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Burn the Maps often sounds like simplicity transformed into bloat in an attempt to sound interesting.
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Burn the Maps is an elemental journey that tugs at the heart and sticks around in the mind.
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Jaysus lads, get out the oven mitts – this one smokes.
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The album moves in gasps and groans, with a steady flow to its twelve songs that weaves together like a symphony.
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Far and away the group's most determined work of its 15-year career.
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It’s an unpredictably bipolar record with plenty of mood swings and emotional shifts that will ultimately leave listeners with feelings of euphoria.
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It's an intensely private album, full of desolation, leave-takings, recriminations and regrets. [21 Feb 2005]
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Some of these exercises in frustration are simply frustrating, but for the most part, The Frames' perverse restraint matches Hansard's lyrics, which are all about lowered expectations.
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Under The RadarWhen it's good, it's great.... However, when it's bad, it borders on boring. [#9]
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MojoAn overwhelming record that bends and blusters with grand passions, bittersweet beauty and no small hint of desperation. [Apr 2005, p.98]
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BlenderMaps... swap[s] the band's trademark dreariness for the U2-style arena-rock sweep that makes their live shows... so exciting. [Mar 2005, p.140]
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Alternative PressBurn The Maps' muted vibe demands that you turn down the lights, fire up the candles and listen hard. [Mar 2005, p.132]
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Entertainment WeeklyThese Irishmen have a way of merging lush Celtic melancholy with inspired Morse-code guitar noise... Alas, they also have a way with misogyny. [4 Feb 2005, p.135]
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Unabashedly mellow and reflective, Burn the Maps may not hook mainstream music fans who've been conditioned to expect a tidily rhyming chorus ever thirty seconds.
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PlanetMeticulous recording, layered songwriting, and a little bit of "special effects" turns a bunch of good songs into a great album. [#9, p.70]
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MagnetOnce a means to subvert pop/rock formula, the band's abruptly shifting dynamics have themselves become formulaic. [#67, p.97]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 31
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Mixed: 2 out of 31
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Negative: 3 out of 31
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Jan 4, 2012
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KathleenM.Jan 23, 2008Excellent, damn near 10.
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HeinMay 3, 2006Very Good!