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Anyone who can craft a record that sounds and feels as good as Get Guilty deserves to keep on making records forever.
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On his second solo outing, New Pornographers main man Carl Newman gives a master class on how to merge melody and classic song structures without making music that sounds dated or retro.
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Get Guilty is unlikely to bust Carl Newman out beyond his inherited fan-base but neither is it likely to disappoint those listening out for more-of-the-same, albeit with obvious but not crippling disadvantages.
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Get Guilty isn’t an easy album at all. It just sounds like one.
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Newman ratchets down the excess while retaining his talent for killer, off-kilter melodies.
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The best songs here stand alongside the best songs in Newman's repertoire, but not everything on Get Guilty lives up to so high a standard. Make of that what you will.
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Newman’s second solo outing, Get Guilty, is a baroque-pop gem, on which he displays remarkable tonal control via crafty arrangement.
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Like Wonder, Guilty has its share of up-tempo tracks, yet its real pleasures are idiosyncratic, revealing themselves the more attentively and often you listen.
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As the album fades out to Newman and company singing, you feel drawn in to the song, much closer to the record than when you began. And that feeling is what makes Get Guilty fantastic.
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Everything’s a little less condensed here than previous entries into the Newman catalogue, and the compositions even get to hang loose at times. That does lead to some delayed gratification, but it’s still exciting to see Newman let his hair down a bit--in an understated manner, of course.
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Q MagazineGet Guilty bursts with dazzling tunes and--for him--relatively simple arrangements. [Apr 2009, p.108]
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Get Guilty isn't quite as consistent as a typical Pornographers record, but the arrangements are lusher. And like all Newman records, it shows off his smarts and maintains a strong hook quotient.
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Yet all of this feels like quibbling when surveying an album that's still devastatingly charming, consistently intelligent, and engaging on first listen.
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Get Guilty dwells on the past, and that pensive reflection mutes the second half, turning Newman's boast into a wistful memory.
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Get Guilty is a stirring set of memorable power-pop, given a personal spin via Newman's habit of delivering hard-to-parse pronouncements, like some kind of mad-eyed, curiously convincing soothsayer.
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This is just a modern rock record, and it definitely won’t change your life, but it’s more than competent and beyond clever.
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Under The RadarNewman is only Guilty of more predictable excellence here, running up his streak of impressive artistic success. [Winter 2009]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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EricCMar 2, 2009
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JeffPFeb 9, 2009
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tomm.Feb 7, 2009