Give Up
- The Postal Service
- Band Name: The Postal Service
- Record Label: Sub Pop
- Release Date: Feb 18, 2003
- Critic Score
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Gibbard's delicate voice matches the subtle electro arrangements far more precisely than it does the folky guitars of his real group.
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Gibbard finds the near-perfect pop record that's eluded his main group. [Listen 2 This supplement, Mar 2003, p.12]
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90Like any worthy match, the coming together gives each aspect assets that they'd be wont to find otherwise, the eletroclashy bursting with depth and the indie-croon thankfully adrenalized.
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The interplay of Gibbard's shyly introspective vocals with Tamborello's dense and meticulous backdrops works surprisingly well, at times better than anything to date from Death Cab or DNTEL.
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80The core tension between Tamborello's complex, almost impossibly dense production and Gibbard's cutting voice makes Give Up a pretty damned strong record, and one with enough transcendent moments to forgive it its few substandard tracks and some ungodly lyrical blunders.
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80Somewhere between Faultline's bedroom-boffin invention and Stephen Merritt's pensive elegance. [May 2003, p.99]
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80All 10 songs yield more delights with every hearing. [May 2003, p.112]
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The project is pretty perfect, really.... Give Up ultimately becomes a beautiful lesson in how to dance life's pain away. [Mar 2003, p.100]
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80Give Up is pure, unadulterated dance pop from start to finish.
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Give Up is an outstanding, creative effort from two of indie rock's most disparate voices.
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80Give Up's one real pitfall is that, on the whole, it sounds almost exactly like you'd expect a collaboration between these two men would, or for that matter, should, sound -- which certainly isn't to say that the music isn't enjoyable, or memorable.
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If Pet Shop Boys recorded for Warp Records, the results might be close.
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album hits people who love the sound extravaganzas of overdubbed guitar symphonies, can't hang with the folkiness full-service singer-songwriters inevitably preserve, and expect melodic flair and beats, yet sometimes want to hear words.
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80The result is somewhere between the Pet Shop Boys' meticulous dance pop and the driving keyboard rock of acts like Zero Zero.
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78Some people who liked the more experimental side of Tamborello's DNTEL project will simply find it a little too boppy for their liking, but it's one of those little discs that practically drills down into your subconscious.
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Never once during the course of the album's ten songs, do its creators even graze the surface of mediocrity, instead settling in the sunny middle ground that Gibbard so often inhabits.
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70A resounding success. [Jun 2003, p.92]
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It doesn't scale the heights of either of their main projects, but it's far more consistent and enjoyable than might be expected.
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Tamborello's delightful pings and whistles fit Gibbard's whimsy perfectly.
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70While the record isn't necessarily an instant classic, the unabashed embrace of simple pop sensibilities, both old and new, make it a record that is hard to stop listening to.
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A pleasurable but uneven set that makes for occasionally compelling, but not addictive, listening.
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30Give Up is a record that says, well, nothing. [#58, p.100]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 76 out of 78
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Mixed: 0 out of 78
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Negative: 2 out of 78