User ratings in Music are temporarily disabled. More info

Encore
by
Encore Image
Metascore
74

Generally favorable reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.4

Generally favorable reviews- based on 11 Ratings

  • Summary: Produced by Dave Cobb, the fourth full-length release for the Nashville-based singer-songwriter features contributions from Tim Bergling, Johnny McDaid, Ed Sheeran, and Chris Stapleton.
Buy Now
Buy on

Top Track

Middle
Staring at two different views on your window ledge Coffee has gone cold, it's like time froze There you go wishing floating down our wishing... See the rest of the song lyrics
See Full Track List »
Powered by

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 7
  3. Negative: 0 out of 7
  1. The New York Times
    Jan 10, 2018
    80
    Encore, his second major-label album, is an often lustrous revisiting of raucous Southern soul, rousingly delivered and pinpoint precise. He has a voice full of extremely careful scrape and crunch, but his howls never feel unhinged.
  2. PopMatters
    Jan 19, 2018
    80
    While Encore may falter here and there from excessive studio production, the album holds up as an overall product, one that implies how tight East and his band would be live.
  3. Slant Magazine
    Jan 10, 2018
    80
    East has such a commanding presence that anything he does is bound to be a triumph of performance, but Encore is also a master class in arrangement. ... The album’s original material is slightly less memorable, if only because the lyrics sometimes trend toward the generic.
  4. American Songwriter
    Jan 10, 2018
    80
    The songs are terrific, East sells them with his gritty, committed vocals and Encore is poised to push the talented singer-songwriter over the top and into the mainstream.
  5. AllMusic
    Jan 11, 2018
    80
    If he sometimes sounds like he leans too hard into his rasp, this vocal tic is mitigated by those songwriting skills and the supple sound of Cobb's production, elements that turn Encore into a minor gem.
  6. Paste Magazine
    Jan 12, 2018
    78
    There’s still more than enough fuel in Encore’s tank to heartily recommend it. I’m just waiting for him to dare a leap into the unknown.
  7. Uncut
    Jan 10, 2018
    40
    [His] voice bulldozes everything in its path, flattening melody and obliterating nearly every sentiment on this overzealous album. [Feb 2018, p.24]
    All this publication's reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. amucomm
    Apr 24, 2018
    8
    Anderson East - Fulminate Start Into The New Year With "ENCORE" - Album Review

    Anderson East's sophomore album "ENCORE" - released on    Anderson East - Fulminate Start Into The New Year With "ENCORE" - Album Review

    Anderson East's sophomore album "ENCORE" - released on Friday (1/12) - lives up to the expectations the title may suggest, it's a great follow up to his major debut "DELILAH." Miranda Lambert's new beau is suddenly all over the map, from NPR's First Listen to the HuffPost and he deserves it. He and producer Dave Cobb are setting a high standard, for what's coming out from the music city on the Cumberland, very early 2018.

    Even though Nashville-based, Alabamian Michael Anderson aka East is not a country artist, the only thing remotely country is his romantical relationship and him covering Willie Nelson's 20-year old standout from "TEATRO" "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces." which with its background choir and arrangement sounds more Joe Cocker than the subdued Texas troubadour. Yes, Anderson digs deeper into the swampy soundscape, like a Delbert McClinton, a Tony Joe White or Irishman Van Morrison his music has no boundaries, he embeds Southern Soul, R&B, Gospel and even Pop into his oeuvre.
    The folk-bluesy Ted Hawkins song, the funny "Sorry You're Sick," from the '82 debut album "WATCH YOUR STEP" with its lyrics:
    What do want from the liquor store
    Something sour or something sweet
    I'll buy all that your belly can hold.
    You can be sure you won't suffer no more.
    now roars and make the offer to help out as a doctor even more insisting.

    On six of the nine originals, East again partners with songwriter Aaron Raitiere, who now writes for producer Dave Cobb's stable, as does Adam Hood who appears as the third co-writer on "Surrender," a song that could be straight out of Ike and Tina Turner's songbook.
    Natalie Hemby, who had ten songs recorded by Lambert "FOR THE WEIGHT OF THESE WINGS" and released her own album 'PUXICO" last year, completes the trio on "This Too Shall Last" and "House Is A Building." latter a song that life is only complete when the partner is in it, where the house as a building becomes a home with feeling.
    Old friend Chris Stapleton helped on the slow heartbreaker "If You Keep Leaving Me"/I keep loving you and he and his wife Morgane got together with Anderson to write "King For A Day" while they were on tour together. Even though not a boiler, the simmering piece with Stapleton as a guest on the six-string, is one of best songs on the album.
    And even if your heart can't
    Look my way
    Even if our love can't
    Stay together
    I'd rather be king for a day
    Than a fool forever

    "All On My Mind" was a sketch brought to East by Ed Sheeran and Johnny McDaid from Snow Patrol and that song does not fit on "Encore." With its lush strings and a subdued Anderson, it sounds like this is the one song the record label will push onto the radio to make Anderson East into the star they want him to be. He's better than that.
    At the very end of the album is another outstanding, yet somber storyteller "Cabinet Door"; from the perspective of an elderly widower trying to cope with the loss of his wife, East and Jillia Jackson wrote a lyrical gem of how to try to cope with everyday life after your partner of many years has passed:
    I found your old cookbooks but the biscuits ain't right
    How do you work this damn coffee pot?
    And all my shirt tails are wrinkled but the bed is still made
    Cause your smell still lingers on where you laid

    Again pairing with non-mainstream producer Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell) the album seems to have an organic feel to it, still embracing the tradition but with an updated more modern approach to it. Cobb was not only at the helm of the board, but also participated as a musician and a co-writer on "Girlfriend" with help from Swedish pop icon Avicii, Raitiere and East. With its infatuation lyrics and it's lush synth (Moog) sound, lusting after a friend's fiancee is a romp on the disc. Too bad he couldn't transfer that energy to the live performance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

    Brother, we might have a problem
    Cause she’s staring me down and I’m tempted
    And I ain’t going to say I’m sorry now
    I think I’m in love with your girlfriend    … Expand

Current Music Releases

Full List »
99 Band on the Run [50th Anniversary Edition] - Paul McCartney & Wings
95 The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow - Charles Lloyd
92 This Could Be Texas - English Teacher
92 COWBOY CARTER - Beyoncé
91 The Carnegie Hall Concert - Alice Coltrane
90 1989 (Taylor's Version) - Taylor Swift
90 Iechyd Da - Bill Ryder-Jones
89 I Got Heaven - Mannequin Pussy
89 Black Bayou - Robert Finley
89 Tigers Blood - Waxahatchee
89 Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend
88 Ozarker - Israel Nash
88 What Now - Brittany Howard
88 Hey Panda - The High Llamas
88 Orquídeas - Kali Uchis
88 The Past Is Still Alive - Hurray for the Riff Raff
87 Filthy Underneath - Nadine Shah
87 i/o - Peter Gabriel
87 Lahai - Sampha
87 Blue Lips - ScHoolboy Q
All Current Music »