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Jan 30, 2015Not only are these songs about crushes, they feel just like one: emotionally intense, completely beautiful, and above all, fleeting.
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Sep 24, 2014This album is never afraid to speak its mind and voice its elastic relationship with love, pulled close only to be pinged apart.
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Sep 22, 2014Songs come and go, often built on little more than O’s voice and the brushed strum of an acoustic guitar, seemingly competing to see which can retreat furthest into the shadows.
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Alternative PressSep 3, 2014It's lo-fi simplicity makes for a welcome addition to any CoCoRosie fan's collection. [Oct 2014, p.101]
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Sep 3, 2014These are pretty, sweet, gorgeously simple songs, some not fully formed, which have come, been and gone.
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Entertainment WeeklySep 9, 2014The lo-fi bedroom lullabies on Crush Songs do have a pretty simplicity, but it's ultimately a sleepy listen with a lot of half-formed song sketches. [12 Sep 2014, p.62]
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Sep 11, 2014Crush Songs is a slightly strange choice for O's first full-fledged solo effort. Still, this unassuming musical diary showcases many of the best things about the music she makes on her own.
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Sep 9, 2014Despite its warbly lo-fi aesthetic and unfinished feel, Crush Songs does have an honest, classic vibe to it.
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Sep 9, 2014The LP has the same winsome vibe as "The Moon Song," her Oscar-nominated theme from Her.
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Sep 8, 2014At times throwaway, at others raw, intimate and charming, there’s plenty here you’ll want to get your mate to ask out for you.
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MagnetSep 18, 2014Crush Songs trades intensity for wistful longing. [No. 113, p.51]
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MojoSep 12, 2014Some are enchanting. [Oct 2014, p.90]
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Sep 10, 2014On this album, it feels like she had been groping for some sense of direction after an exhaustive smackdown. And she decidedly chose the feminine end of her musical ying-yang, opting for quiet, confounding introspection.
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Sep 10, 2014More a record to crush on than fall in love with, but free it from expectations and it'll take a small part of your heart.
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Sep 8, 2014These seemingly underbaked songs reveal more formality and beauty with repeated listens. You have to hear through a lot of haze to get to that, but in the end, it's worth it.
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Sep 5, 2014Much of the record plays like a series of short acoustic interludes: pretty, at times insightful, but evanescent more often than not.
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Sep 4, 2014Several of the songs aren't much more than sketches: a thought, a chord sequence, a fade out. But, as on Moon Song, Karen O displays an ability to articulate raw emotion here, be it on the subject of love, loneliness or strength of will.
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Sep 4, 2014It’s refreshing to hear O sing so delicately--a contrast to the over-the-top persona of her slick main gig--we wish she’d let the heartbreak linger a few moments longer.
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Aug 29, 2014This is principally a marriage of simple, forlorn fretwork and O’s deliciously otherworldly vocals: impossibly, she manages to sound simultaneously seductive and indifferent; emotive yet also strangely detached.
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Q MagazineAug 29, 2014It could all seem like an indulgence, an intimate late-night emotional overspill best kept at home, like crying in front of a mirror. It's testament to O's skills as both songwriter and performer that out in the open, Crush Songs still seems like an attractive prospect. [Oct 2014, p.102]
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UncutAug 29, 2014It's for fans only, but that's where Crush Songs' power lies. [Oct 2014, p.76]
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Sep 17, 2014When every song is short and recorded in the same minimalistic style, it often feels like just when you’re starting to get into a song, you’re immediately whisked away to another idea, to another moment that should have been spent finishing that first thought that now will never be finished.
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Sep 10, 2014It’s all the more disappointing that, despite the rawness of these recordings and the private nature of their creation, O sounds weirdly noncommittal on Crush Songs, as though the sparse demo arrangements were a form of holding back.
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Sep 9, 2014Crush Songs is sad and pretty and likely to be playing at an American Apparel somewhere near you, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s hardly the best work Karen O can do.
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Sep 4, 2014While it's less a painting than a promising sketchbook, these Crush Songs are still perfectly lovely sketches.
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Sep 9, 2014It boldly aims to tighten the gap between today and tomorrow in a time where heartbreak makes a single week feel like eternity, but it’s ultimately memorable only to Karen O worshipers.
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Sep 8, 2014Crush Songs certainly has the consistency of intention to draw in new listeners, but for those who love the pace and grittiness of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the end result might leave them crushing hard for the band's next record and the indefatigable side of Karen O.
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Sep 4, 2014It’s personal--perhaps too much so--in that it can be inaccessible and/or devoid of meaning outside of the immediacy of her heart. But then it doesn’t feel like a self-indulgent collection; there’s a sincerity to her endeavours that endear you to the album despite it’s abundance of misgivings.
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Sep 10, 2014This is a tough listen and not in a good way. Most of the songs are little more than unfinished sketches, most just over a minute long, waiting for more inspiration to be completed.
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Sep 8, 2014Boredom isn't the worst feeling an album can conjure; a sense of wasted opportunity and squandered potential is a wholly graver offense.
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Sep 22, 2014Given that these songs mostly clock in under two minutes, that should be enough to carry the flat arrangements and melodies, but it's not.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 27
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Mixed: 10 out of 27
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Negative: 2 out of 27
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Oct 13, 2014