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Jul 17, 2019While she can’t always shake the anodyne songwriting that plagued her past work, it’s still her best album to date.
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Jul 15, 2019As with all the best sets, it’s coherent but not repetitive, the ghostly Auto-Tune choir, which features on most tracks, sighing and whispering encouragement behind Banks’s increasingly empowered words. There are shades of Bon Iver and Billie Eilish in her layered, subtle sound, but also a rare, steely delicacy all her own.
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Jul 12, 2019[The off-trend songs like Alaska, Sawzall and Hawaiian Mazes] feel freer, more exciting and more innovative. But III isn’t that. Instead, for the most part, it feels like Banks-by-numbers.
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Jul 12, 2019The mood of the album largely feels scattered and unfocused, and nothing lands quite as well as the bass-heavy, vengeful breakup song template that she’s best known for. Banks sounds freer, and is showing new sides of herself, but they’re not all entirely convincing.
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Jul 11, 2019III is Banks’s most cohesive album to date because she’s no longer restricting herself to exploring one feeling at a time.
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Jul 11, 2019Banks clearly encouraged them [her collaborators] to swing for the fences: The distressed sonics her get as extreme as Low got on last year’s Double Negative, albeit in much different context. It’s thrilling, gutting stuff.
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Jul 11, 2019Her most accomplished statement to date, a collection brimming with emotion, attitude, and unexpected delights.
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Q MagazineJul 9, 2019Although III doesn't offer anything to rival [2014's Beggin For Thread] in songwriting stakes, it does manage to mine thrills from an adventurous production. [Aug 2019, p.108]
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Jul 9, 2019iii is probably a couple of tracks too long, but Banks has created another supremely intriguing musical world filled with ear-snagging lyrics and quirky production flourishes: the lone dog-bark sound effect before the final chorus of ‘Gimme’ is a classic Banks touch. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion “that bitch” is a pretty apt description for her after all.
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Jul 9, 2019Overall, Banks has taken a step forward in her development as an artist, and you can hear this increase in maturity across each album. At times, her evolution is not as convincing as other artists on her level, though the quality of the songwriting here generally makes up for that.
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Jul 9, 2019III is definitely a progression for her as an artist. The more upbeat tracks are interspersed among softer, more delicate, heartfelt ones that represent the duality of her personality and also increase its replay value.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 115 out of 134
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Mixed: 9 out of 134
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Negative: 10 out of 134
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Jul 15, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019