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Let It Come Down is another masterfully made Spiritualized album, but its very ambitions sometimes overwhelm it.
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Alternative PressAn ambitious record that pays skillful tribute to teachers like Pink Floyd, but shows off its ambition too much. [Nov 2001, p.94]
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Pierce shows neither the vocal presence nor the songwriting chops to justify Let It Come Down's bloated orchestral excess.
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Even visionaries lose sight at times, as Pierce does on "Let It Come Down," an album that can only be deemed a fractured opus.
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BlenderBrings Pierce's preoccupation with panoramic emotional and chemical excess to startling, transcendent climax. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.112]
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Let It Come Down, might well contain the most potent feel-good music he's yet crafted.
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You could get lost for days in the depths of these arrangements, and still find something moving and transcendental at every gilded turn. It's a towering achievement...
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Clever? Yes. Stupid? Possibly. Essential? Absolutely.
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A big, lumbering, and often uplifting symphonic-rock piece about being a wastrel, it's as if Brian Wilson had made ''Pet Sounds'' a decade later in the midst of his bedridden, drug-addled despondency.
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MojoIt is an unconvincing record as a whole, and parts of it are profoundly dull. [Oct 2001, p.124]
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As if its size alone weren't enough to set the album apart from his preceding Spiritualized outings, Pierce has removed all the sounds he thought were immediately identifiable as Spiritualized -- delay, phase, Telecaster, Farfisa -- and left the songs as largely orchestral numbers.
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'Let It Come Down' is another towering achievement - both musically and emotionally.... This is music as it's meant to be: raw, colossal and awe-inspiring. No wonder everything else just pales in comparison.
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Granted, a few tracks here require perhaps too much patience, or never peak as one might expect, or are overburdened with sound. But even these lesser tracks contain the simple, yet stunning affirmations that make Pierce so engaging.
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It's a huge album, a beautiful album, a witty album, and above all, a Spiritualized album, through and through. If you like Spiritualized albums, you will love 'Let It Come Down'. If you don't, it may be time for a rethink.
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What at first, certainly compared to its startling predecessor, feels like a retreat from modern music’s radical frontline (nasty jazz, electronica, noise) gradually unfolds to offer equally interesting new ways of hearing.
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On Let It Come Down, Jason Pierce successfully peels away layers of pretension and exposes the humanity at the heart of his music.
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SpinPierce's flimsy voice and material buckle under the weight of the Technicolor bombast on Let It Come Down. [Oct 2001, p.127]
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Pierce enhances his trademark electro-scapes with rich gospel choruses and grand orchestral flourishes for operatic effect.
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The album consistently takes control of your emotions.
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The chasm between his musical and lyrical ambitions is as amusing as it is frustrating.
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The WireLet It Come Down suffers just a little from Pierce's presumably healthier outlook. [#211, p.66]
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Spiritualized's latest aural triumph... In truth, half of Let It Come Down is just sludgy crap, but the half of the chalice that's full truly runneth over into the realm of, um, the awe-inspiring. If not the sublime.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 25
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Mixed: 2 out of 25
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Negative: 5 out of 25
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JonLAug 21, 2006
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NorthFreedomFighterApr 6, 2005
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TravisJul 7, 2004