- Record Label: Other Music Recording Company
- Release Date: Dec 3, 2013
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Feb 5, 2014Love's Crushing Diamond is a title that captures the hope and hardship in these songs, and the album's kindness and calmness make it the musical embodiment of a friend whose shoulder is ready to cry on at a moment's notice.
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Jan 6, 2014Despite comparisons to Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, Lee creates folky, orchestral, synth-pop soundscapes that are uniquely his own. Where similar music can sound overproduced, Mutual Benefit has an organic, intuitive quality, more like a hearth-side jam session with friends in a woodsy cabin.
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Dec 3, 2013The succinctness of the record creeps up on you, making it dissolve through your fingers in an unexpected way. But, maybe that’s part of the appeal, the desire for more that it leaves behind, a heightened hunger for baroque-tinged indie pop.
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Jan 30, 2014It seals the chapter of Jordan’s late teens, early twenties, and it lands up being his finest work by a country mile.
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Dec 3, 2013It is minimalist yet lush, hopeful yet rooted in a stark and sometimes grim reality.
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MojoJan 23, 2014Love's Crushing Diamond is restful, woven, baroque. [Feb 2014, p.89]
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Jan 8, 2014On Love’s Crushing Diamond, Lee offers seven immaculately composed tracks, all of which feature his refreshingly optimistic ruminations on love and life in today’s world.
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Jan 21, 2014Lee’s lyrics are sometimes sentimental to the point of potentially seeming trite, but they’re logical for a situation where love and pain have become so overwhelming that simple statements seem the most trustworthy.
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Dec 3, 2013Love’s Crushing Diamond never is over-intellectualized, but it lets emotion guide the trajectory, and taking something away from the album is dependent on the listener’s willingness to feel.
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Dec 3, 2013[A] collection of seven gorgeous, baroque-folk songs.
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Jan 6, 2014Love’s Crushing Diamond arrives fully formed, a complete sonic work that tenderly guides you along and clothes you in its layered beauty.
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Dec 11, 2013It's fine music to nest in.
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Jan 23, 2014All in all it's a time of self-expression and free-revelation, common features that make Love's Crushing Diamond so very beguiling, and warm its very earnest center.
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Jan 21, 2014Maybe now he can sleep a little less on floors and spend more time making gorgeous albums like this. Please.
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Jan 8, 2014Like the tightrope act of love itself, Love’s Crushing Diamond perseveres through calculated effort never to offend or betray the trust of its betrothed listener.
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UncutJan 15, 2014The result is a meditative, wide-open form of celestial American folk music. [Feb 2014, p.78]
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Jan 13, 2014Mutual Benefit isn't afraid to be hokey and direct, and in a music environment that can sometimes value cool detachment and perfection a little too much, music like this might be needed more than anyone knows.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 26
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Mixed: 1 out of 26
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Negative: 1 out of 26
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Dec 30, 2013
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Dec 7, 2013
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Dec 4, 2013