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Feb 24, 2014The way they join the organic and the electronic, the cerebral and the emotional on Close to the Glass makes it the most thoroughly rewarding and enjoyable album of the Notwist's career to date.
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Alternative PressFeb 20, 2014Close To The Glass resembles ice-skate carvings on a frozen lake: jagged, cold but filled with fractured, ambient beauty. [Mar 2014, p.93]
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Feb 27, 2014The home stretch of the album is where the band really opens up, unleashing haunting melodies and intricate movements that create a soundtrack for a virtual fever dream.
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Mar 11, 2014The glacial pace and gentle vocals remain, as does the unique mix of electronic landscape and live instrumentation.
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Feb 18, 2014Each and every track has its own identity that perfectly mixes the familiar with the unfamiliar, which is simply a continuation of what The Notwist have always been best at.
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Feb 20, 2014Close to the Glass isn't quite the luxurious auditory and emotional jacuzzi the Notwist's albums have been in the past. It's more a wading pool made of obligation and diffidence.
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Feb 24, 2014The only notable shift in balance is a slight tipping of the scale towards the weight of electronic over acoustic instrumentation.
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MojoMar 21, 2014Close To The Glass is full of charming, understated yearning. [Apr 2014, p.94]
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Feb 24, 2014The Notwist is an apt example of a band that is making good music for no other reason than because making music is what they love to do, which Close To The Glass demonstrates in spades.
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Feb 25, 2014On Close to the Glass, the results are more fractured and schizophrenic than ever.
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Feb 27, 2014There was always a tendency to divert into different styles on their prior albums (at least from 12 onward), but always with a feel of continuity underpinning it all, as if each path they took was firmly routing off the same road. Here, their razor-sharp sense of direction feels strangely blunted.
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Feb 26, 2014Unfortunately with the addition of the Notwist’s awkward electronic sections Close to the Glass becomes frustratingly uneven.
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Feb 19, 2014Unlike the best of the Notwist’s output, Close to the Glass isn’t emotionally nourishing, primarily because there’s no real sense that anything is at stake.
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Q MagazineFeb 18, 2014Their eighth LP brilliantly snaps together everything. [Mar 2014, p.117]
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Feb 24, 2014Clatter arises from songs and songs from clatter, and it's maddening how so many of them seem to randomly end before committing to actual endings.
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Feb 18, 2014Every element of Close to the Glass feels like it has been minutely polished; like the workings of a miniature pocket watch, it all feels succinct, gleaming and fresh.
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Feb 25, 2014Eight albums into its career (nine, if you count Sturm, a 2009 film score), the band has lost none of its ability to aim boldly for the gut.
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Feb 19, 2014Close to the Glass is a record bookended with perfectly executed experiments, so gentle on the ears. Beautiful and perfect, they make the whole record seem round, and right.
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Mar 17, 2014With guitars or electronics, the Notwist projects a sense of isolation and displacement.
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The WireMar 26, 2014Satisfying proof that pop remain pop however thoroughly digested. [Feb 2014, p.54]
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Mar 4, 2014While it offers just enough in the way of individuality to stave off a disappearance within the impersonal grid of the received and the conventional, it still can’t quite fuse this into a coherent personality that transcends its inhibiting foundations.
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UncutFeb 18, 2014It's sensitively poised and technically perfect. [Mar 2014, p.80]
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Feb 21, 2014Close To The Glass is a forum in which ramshackle indie-pop, acoustic balladry, and expansive electronic sonic explorations happily coexists, and it's all the better for it. [Feb/Mar 2014, p.74]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 11
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Mixed: 2 out of 11
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Negative: 0 out of 11
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Apr 24, 2014