User ratings in Music are temporarily disabled. More info
- Summary: The Portland art rockers release their latest album of improvisational, experimental space-y jams.
Buy Now
- Record Label: Fire Records
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Post-Rock, Experimental Rock, Indie Folk
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 3 out of 10
-
Mixed: 7 out of 10
-
Negative: 0 out of 10
-
The WireAug 12, 2011The group's love and knowledge of folk and psychedelia is really to the fore on this collection, as they unravel both and knit them back together in bolder, even wiggier patterns. [Jun 2011, p.57]
-
Jul 6, 2011This shifting back and forth between tradition and avant-garde tradition, as it were, defines much of the rest of the album -- call it maturing or call it other interests, but it's a comfortable enough listen, as appropriate for the schizophrenic beast that still gets labeled indie rock as anything else.
-
Jul 6, 2011Earth Sound System is structured with actual musical tracks interspersed between organized chaotic electronica. The attempts at the two different approaches to this type of music come off as undecided and incoherent, yet there is merit in the tracks that actually offer stable grounds for musical exploration.
-
Jun 28, 2011[Where We Go] is far and away the most interesting, listenable yet challenging, thing on this patchy and unfocussed album.
-
MojoJun 28, 2011Reaching a jubilant, freak-flag waving climax with the garage sloppiness of Where We Go, what's left is a quieter set of herbal spirituals that continue to link strands of country, folk and blues with the group's own beautifully wayward sense of direction. [Jul 2011, p.105]
-
Jun 28, 2011Greenwood and co.'s impulses have grown disappointingly easy to dissect. The result is music that, by any definition, remains experimental and difficult, but the invigorating internal tension between the ordained simplicity of American musics and the free-will noise jams has evaporated.
-
Jun 28, 2011Alas, the new Earth Sound System is a particularly undecided record, offering two disparate approaches that make no attempt to cohere. The caveat "your mileage may vary" has rarely been so applicable.