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May 6, 2013By turns raw and reflective, Monomania is about shaking things up; it's not as grand or cohesive as Microcastle or Halcyon Digest, but with repeated listens, its quick shifts in sound and mood feel more like different sides of the same coin than a split personality.
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May 3, 2013Monomania is certainly a strong effort on its own merits, and more importantly, they’ve avoided making their deflating “diminishing returns” record.
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UncutApr 29, 2013Cox's wistful croon and a proto-motorik chug are as wonderfully deadly as ever. [Jun 2013, p.71]
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May 7, 2013It’s half as strange as anything Deerhunter or Atlas Sound has made before, but twice as reflective of, well, music.
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MojoMay 20, 2013Here comes irascible, unhousetrained indie-rock, laced with discord and lo-fi gnarl, yet thoroughly fresh and weirdly magnetic from start to finish. [Jun 2013, p.84]
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Q MagazineMay 13, 2013A delicious vision of pop crooked enough to pull corks with. [Jun 2013, p.96]
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Apr 29, 2013While Cox is no stranger to gut-spilling, it feels as poignant as ever on this record.
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May 7, 2013There is clearly no quietude in Cox's frantic mind, but his obsession yields beauty.
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May 9, 2013What it is, is a fine follow-up to 2009’s Halcyon Digest and another example of what can happen when a brilliant songwriter retreats into his own head and comes out with visions of monsters.
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May 10, 2013Initially intending to discard the songs he wrote during that [dark] period, he instead salvaged many of them, which serve as something of a spiritual cleanse on the staggering Monomania.
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May 6, 2013It's an intense, sometimes violent, occasionally beautiful rock'n'roll record that once again proves the unpredictability and reliability of Deerhunter.
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May 2, 2013It’s kind of sloppy, but it also sounds pretty astonishing cranked up loud, and despite the mixed emotional messages I suspect it’ll find its calling this summer as the band’s most fun album.
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May 7, 2013Monomania feels less like a collection of songs that belong together and more like simply a group of great tunes.
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May 7, 2013An impishly brilliant 12-song set of scruffy garage rock with moments of dreamy shimmer, Monomania leaves no confusion about what sort of band Deerhunter are: one that won't stoop to conquer.
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May 9, 2013Its mood is all over the place, but that suits it.
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May 7, 2013Don’t blink--no mere mid-career album, Monomania registers as an absolute impact event, a massive dirty blast marking the moment Deerhunter’s steady trajectory spins out of control.
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May 7, 2013It’s a cagey, manic record that tethers the band’s new-American muscle to Cox’s longstanding self-immolation.
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Entertainment WeeklyMay 3, 2013The music sounds more hot-blooded and feral. [10 May 2013, p.67]
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May 6, 2013Monomania is an easy album to become monomaniac about.
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May 7, 2013Monomania will be remembered as the album where Deerhunter veered from their carefully acquired sound as opposed to constructing a more pronounced encapsulation of it.
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May 2, 2013Monomania somehow makes Deerhunter’s previous albums sound like they were controlled and constrained, as if it took four albums for Cox to finally be the shit disturber he’s always wanted to be.
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May 7, 2013Taken as a whole, Monomania is arguably their most imposing, and by far their most courageous, proving that Deerhunter have a frontman who’s willing to open up his soul to fit the demands of the stage.
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May 6, 2013There is a form of mania at work here, but the results are propulsive and ecstatic.
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May 8, 2013Monomania demands an undivided attention and continuous play to truly see the beauty within its surrealism.
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MagnetJun 18, 2013Monomania is stacked with track-to-track unshakable, albeit twisted, pop melodies and an atmosphere of unrest that will stick with you between repeated listens. [No.99, p.52]
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May 6, 2013For the album’s driving first half, the messiness is captivating, culminating in “Dream Captain,” reminiscent of T. Rex on “Bang a Gong.” The second half teeters on standard bohemian dissipation, but with a sly and rare self-knowingness.
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Apr 29, 2013Like Cox, Monomania is an enigma, wrapped in distortion.
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May 21, 2013Despite a pronounced lean towards the gritty in all its finer trappings, Deerhunter’s fifth longplayer is riddled with some of Cox’s most structurally sound songwriting.
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May 21, 2013Monomania is the sound of a healthy and aware group of musicians who have experimented with artifice and ultimately moved beyond it.
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May 6, 2013It may not reach the same creative highs or artistic wholeness of their previous releases, but in its own right, it can be just as enjoyable.
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Jul 9, 2013This kind of hunger, this kind of uphill battle and this kind of gritty determination leaks out onto Monomania with tremendous results; the ending fruition is another gleaming winner for Cox and Deerhunter.
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May 8, 2013While it’s certainly not what anyone thought a new Deerhunter album would sound like three years removed from the world of Halcyon Digest, the band certainly succeeds in their goal of crafting “nocturnal garage, and the album’s high points--namely “Monomania,” “Punk,” “The Missing” and “T.H.M.”--are some of the best songs the group has ever recorded.
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May 3, 2013It is not a return to form, because how could we expect or want it to be? It is a return to the contextually avant-garde, and for Deerhunter in 2013 that means rock n’ roll.
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May 6, 2013Deerhunter wins more than it loses on Monomania.
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May 21, 2013Consider me converted, at least until Bradford Cox lurches off in yet another direction.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 49 out of 56
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Mixed: 6 out of 56
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Negative: 1 out of 56
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May 7, 2013
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May 10, 2013
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May 7, 2013