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Q MagazineApr 1, 2016Junk is deeply uncool, uncoolly deep, and utterly magnifique. [May 2016, p.115]
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Apr 8, 2016It’s easily M83’s most challenging, best album to date.
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Apr 8, 2016Through examples of sappy balladry, daytime TV and B-movie theme music, and bubblegum pop disco recreations, Gonzalez indulges in an oft-disavowed musical zeitgeist, imbuing it with the substance it always seemed to be missing.
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Apr 4, 2016Muppets In Space album cover aside, Gonzalez has still left plenty on Junk for his merry usual band of misfits--the lovers, the dreamers, and him.
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Apr 7, 2016While all listeners may not share his fascination with '80s pop culture detritus, it's hard not to respect how expertly he transforms it into something genuine.
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Apr 6, 2016He [bandleader Anthony Gonzalez] masterfully weaves myriad sounds and structures--mainly late 70s- and early 80s-influenced--into a remarkably strong, cohesive unit.
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Apr 6, 2016There is some skill here: strong melodies, extra chords, synthesized string arrangements, a tremendously accomplished chromatic-harmonica solo. They are intense.
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MagnetJun 1, 2016The touch is lighter, with more interest in groove and atmosphere than climax. [No. 131, p.59]
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UncutApr 27, 2016A series of convoluted psych-pop romps, some drizzled with synth-sax, that perplex and please in equal measure. [Jun 2016, p.76]
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Apr 18, 2016It is in Anthony Gonzalez’ veins to make pop music where the listener will swoon, dream and ultimately smile. Despite the mournful lag in the middle of JUNK, that is what he does once again here--in his own inimitable way.
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Apr 7, 2016The result is less serious than his last release--the kind of thing we might hear back from aliens in response to radio waves that escaped our stratosphere long ago.
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Apr 6, 2016With Junk, Gonzalez has taken M83 into a whole new galaxy that is just as ambitious and starry-eyed as everything that came before it.
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Apr 4, 2016Once Gonzalez has had his fun and begins to settle in to the ways of the old M83, but with a bit of a pop sheen to it, is when Junk works best. It’s just a shame you have to flick through the channels to find the gold.
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Apr 11, 2016In the end, though, it’s that feeling of disposability that makes the album’s title resonate more pointedly in the wrong way.
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Apr 11, 2016Junk functions best as Gonzalez curating the soundtrack of his past, as on an individual basis these songs are usually quite enjoyable, well-crafted and dripping with affection for an era most people would prefer to forget.
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Apr 8, 2016Junk's bar napkin organization never finds the kind of pacing and perspective that made "epic" such a tempting word to describe past M83 albums.
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Apr 6, 2016It's a superficial thrill ride but without those evocative moments, that captivating emotional core, it lacks staying power.
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Apr 7, 2016It’s fantasy stuff--evocative rather than perceptive, and awfully cheesy. But it’s also incredibly refined.
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Apr 5, 2016On a base, per-song level, Junk is a sturdy little workhorse of an album.
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Apr 1, 2016They say good artists borrow and great artists steal, but here Gonzalez does neither--his heart doesn’t seem to be in the heist anymore.
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Apr 20, 2016Time will only tell if this peculiar off-the-grid move garners the same sort of reverence Dead Cities owns today.
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Apr 6, 2016The album rarely manages to break free of its ’80s-lite inspiration, its tricks little more than emulations--not innovations--of the source material.
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Apr 1, 2016Junk, M83's seventh studio album, sounds chintzy--a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez's love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs.
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Sep 30, 2016M83 are master recyclers of Eighties soundscapes on 2011 double-album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. First offering since then, Junk attempts the same, but jumps the shark in the process.
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May 20, 2016Particularly bad is For The Kids, which could come straight from an amateur production of High School Musical (complete with repellent husky spoken-word middle eight), while the just up-to-scratch Beck track, Time Wind, and his presence on the record as a whole, only really serves to illustrate how poor the songs now are.
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Apr 14, 2016Gonzalez's more sincere side peeks through in moody, orchestral tracks like "Solitude," and the harmonica-heavy ballad, "Sunday Night 1987." Still, as its title implies, Junk leans too heavily on the quirks from the past, rife with the least flattering odds and ends of a time long gone.
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Apr 8, 2016Messy, complicated, capable of star turns, it’s clearly a record Gonzalez needed to get out of his system.
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Apr 7, 2016Junk is purely for Anthony Gonzalez. In that regard, it is indeed his most personal work. It is indeed a statement, though a cheap and hollow one, worthy of its title. Frankly, you expect better.
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MojoApr 1, 2016Overblown and cloying, it destroys any early promise by way of total saccharine overdose. [May 2016, p.86]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 128 out of 162
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Mixed: 20 out of 162
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Negative: 14 out of 162
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Apr 9, 2016
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Apr 8, 2016
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Apr 10, 2016