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- By date
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Entertainment WeeklyRogue's high, gentle vocals and halcyon harmonies mask lyrics that are occasionally dark and cynical--but never mushy. [28 Oct 2005, p.87]
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BillboardOne of the year's best. [29 Oct 2005]
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A fabulous collection of delirious, dizzy alt-pop.
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It’s full of the minute anxieties of life that keep you awake in the early hours, but set to some of the most life-affirming sounds you’ll have heard for a long time.
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Unlike Rogue Wave's timid debut, Vultures blazes forward with the kind of assured bravado not usually seen this side of U2.
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Rogue Wave has reinvented itself with soft-edged, yet masculine, music that's far from fluffy.
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If not as easy to embrace as its predecessor, the album compensates with a great deal more ambition in its scope.
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Under The RadarA perfect mix of tender melodies and rock and roll. [#11, p.108]
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UncutWhat elevates Rogue Wave above the pale massed ranks of the wispy and fey, though, are melodies with real muscle, and a muscial ambition that flirts with the experimental, but remains joyously within reach of the FM dial. [Dec 2005, p.112]
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In the end, it's hard to decide if Descended Like Vultures is better or worse than Rogue Wave's debut.
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One could argue that it sounds like a different group on this release, and technically it is. Still, if you like the last album from Rogue Wave, I can't imagine you going wrong with this one.
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The sanitized production can be a bit of a stumbling block, and Rogue occasionally gets ahead of himself with his high-spire vocals, but Descended Like Vultures is by and large not the sophomore slump such and such and so and so were expecting.
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With Descended Like Vultures, Rogue Wave have become just another indie rock band, one that has delivered a strong album without a weak song on it, but a real band just the same.
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Paste MagazineFor all its efforts to dazzle, Rogue Wave's music rarely engages the emotions the way it ought to. [Dec 2005, p.124]
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Some of the bridges still get hazy, and a few songs sound like each other, but for the most part, the guitars revel in their unleashed electricity and the rhythms are layered, propulsive and paradoxically so anchored they seem free.
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Descended Like Vultures still has its moments of pleasing, ephemeral pop, but those moments, if nothing else, work as nice interludes between the more engaging numbers.
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Though it's generally enjoyable throughout, Descended Like Vultures feels more stunted than it should, as though Rogue were afraid to open up these songs too much.
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The production swamps. Too many waves of superfluities covering weak melodies and spearheading disappointing "new directions," too often sounding like the work of a far less interesting band.
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Alternative PressRogue Wave now resemble a more earnest Flaming Lips. [Dec 2005, p.204]
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Rolling StoneThe cumulative effect feels a little dreary. [1 Dec 2005, p.128]
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MojoIt's sweet and vivid, but also a bit messy. [Dec 2005, p.116]
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The band hasn’t yet proven capable of rendering a thoroughly remarkable album. This is nothing to be ashamed of, though.
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Descended Like Vultures snuggles down between Wolf Parade’s Apologies To The Queen Mary and Modest Mouse’s 2004 release, Good News For People Who Like Bad News as a competent, half-slapped together, half-methodic slice of evolved indie-rock.
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While the Big Chorus and post-hardcore theatricality are hardly disparate stylistic traits, it's odd that Rogue Wave would embrace them after establishing themselves as a nuanced pop outfit.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 21 out of 24
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Mixed: 1 out of 24
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Negative: 2 out of 24
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MichaelB.Aug 15, 2007
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CurtisWJan 25, 2006
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MackBJan 15, 2006