- Critic score
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- By date
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Gorgeous Johnny may be too well crafted for the band's traditional-leaning fans, but its highlights are hard to resist.
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All of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes.
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MojoThe core idea brings a bright focus and forward movement to their gummy, ambrosial stoner sound, adding bright melody and fairytale zing to these end-of-summer tales of beachbound escape and smalltown torpor. [Nov 2009, p.101]
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UncutThe conceit, owing as much to Thomas Pynchon as it does to the Grateful Dead, and songs like 'Jehovah Will Never Come' remain delightful. [Nov 2009, p.104]
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The guitars are jangly and questionably tuned; the drums are doused in whiskey but always manage to keep the train moving; and the vocals are passionately out-of-key but always a perfect companion to the aesthetic and historical world they float within.
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They are not in tune with trends, or even an aesthetic, so much as something earthier...the seasons perhaps, because there’s no denying that Gorgeous Johnny has a latitude and a longitude... it’s the sound of a fading summer.
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In the end there are too few of those evocative moments, and Gorgeous Johnny ends up coming off as a less than inviting album.
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The bulk of Gorgeous Johnny is unfortunately too earnest and too patient really to go anywhere in particular, preening like a collection of meticulously cleaned Travis demos or, at their worst, an Adam Green album without any of the dirty bits.