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Harmonium Image
Metascore
73

Generally favorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The rock quartet from Nottingham releases its debut album.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 9
  2. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. Mojo
    80
    What they bring to the table is a living, breathing sence of the organic. [June 2009, p.109]
  2. Uncut
    80
    Here, the presence of a harmonium updates some lava lamp pyschedelic freakouts, David Axelrod's jazzy grooves and the feathery female harmonies of The Free Design, whose Chris Dedrick provides sleevenotes for the vinyl. [Jun 2009, p.101]
  3. Harmonium could quite easily have been a sterile exercise in musical pastiche. What The Soundcarriers have turned the album into is a living, breathing entity that restores the listener's faith in music.
  4. Under The Radar
    70
    Soundcarriers offer something a little less detatched, with less intellectual exercises and more communal experimentation. [Summer 2009, p.68]
  5. Harmonium gets tiresome toward the end. However, fans of light, clean, crisp and non-threatening psychedelia--as in '60s children's TV music, library music, groovy instrumentals with a flute lead, etc.--will be delighted, and rightfully so.
  6. Harmonium is as sunny and affable for outdoor get-togethers as it is sexified for one’s swinging bachelor pad.
  7. Their loping AM-radio psychedelia--like later Stereolab or lighter Dungen--engages with enough noise (if not complex rhythms) to keep the band out of mawkish territory.

See all 9 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of
  2. Mixed: 0 out of
  3. Negative: 0 out of