Harmonies For The Haunted
- stellastarr*
- Band Name: stellastarr*
- Record Label: RCA
- Release Date: Sep 13, 2005
- Critic Score
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80Overall, the effect is post-punk Cure with swathes of Ride in heady moments and, as overblown and unlistenable as these amassed elements might sound in your head, it's actually fantastic.
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80Picks up where [their debut] left off. [#69, p.108]
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Stellastarr* pushes its new grasp of tension and release, and the album shows their increased sense of cohesion.
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70A charged return. [Mar 2006, p.96]
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Stellastarr sound playful but passionate, flashing their Eighties go-feet beats ("Damn This Foolish Heart") alongside moody, Cure-style ballads.
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It is missing IT - that something that makes a good album into a great, standout album.
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A pleasurable, spun-sugar confection. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.122]
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69Harmonies for the Haunted seems as familiar as Stellastarr*'s 2003 debut, and that's at once its chief cincher and problem.
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60Often, it's too much of a good thing. [Sep 2005, p.137]
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60The addition of elegiac, slower songs ensure that this post-punk quarter is only moving forward. [Oct 2005, p.85]
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A game of "name that influence" runs rampant from the album's start to its closing seconds.
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60Good, but should have been better. [Mar 2006, p.109]
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Has the unmistakable sound of a sophomore slump. [#10, p.107]
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50On first listen 'Harmonies For The Haunted' seems slight enough to be a collection of b-sides and discarded songs from the first album.
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The band ultimately lose the pop craftsmanship and hook-filled bite that distinguished their debut. [Oct 2005, p.166]
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What gave Shawn Christensen and his botched tonsillectomy the idea of joining the exalted ranks of Robert Smith and Simon Le Bon?
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50For every good example of what a 21st century band can do with new wave influences, there is a pale imitation of a song you thought was cool 20 years ago.
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The problem is Shawn Christensen's bellowingly unsubtle vocal style, which batters every last vestige of restraint out of its way as it strains for greater heights of veins-bulging volume-as-passion.
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40Rather desperately impersonates The Killers. [Mar 2006, p.94]
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40Some promising tunes are weighed down by Shawn Christensen's vocals, which seem to have been invented purely to supply budding Simon Cowells with cruel one-liners.
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25People from New York trying to sound like people from England trying to imagine what Neil Young would sound like if he were in Coldplay. [Oct 2005, p.137]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 23
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Mixed: 3 out of 23
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Negative: 1 out of 23
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Sebastian5Stellastarr*'s first album was so catchy and very Pixies-like. This one does suffer the "sophomore slump".
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ryann10this is the BEST band ever and i recomend it to all ppls k lol
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JoaquinS9