Metascore
89

Universal acclaim - based on 20 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 20
  3. Negative: 0 out of 20
  1. With Neon Golden, the Notwist have created a daring album full of different sounds and textures. While this might sound like a textbook post-rock album, it is without a doubt a record firmly anchored by its pop sensibilities.
  2. 100
    Every single song is an hummable masterpiece of pop experimentation.
  3. Neon Golden is one of the most exquisite electronic albums to come out in ages.
  4. 100
    The Notwist can sculpt more emotional sounds and music into a compact and cutting four minutes than most can do in a career.
  5. 100
    A unique and beautiful work that will be returned to again and again. Definitely, already, an album of the year.
  6. A decade into their career, the Notwist have created a masterpiece by pulling the same trick they pulled on Shrink: mixing things that might not seem to fit together into a beautiful, seamless whole.
  7. Planet
    90
    The vocals are really what seem to live with you after one listen, making Neon Golden memorable beyond its audio gimmicks. [#3, p.87]
  8. Album number five dwarfs its predecessors because the members have started treating this group as the sun around which their musical projects must inevitably revolve, and the home to which they must return.
  9. The Notwist's previous stabs at fusing pop, techno, punk, and jazz were dominated by post-adolescent melancholy and petulance. Though Neon Golden obsesses over locked rooms and missed chances, it also acknowledges the pleasures of stasis, the distant possibility of change, and an overall affinity with the "freaks."
  10. Halfway through the album, it's clear that this is a glimpse into the future of pop music.
  11. Not only shares some textural similarities with Radiohead's "Kid A," but rivals it as an art-rock classic.
  12. 90
    Elegant and subtle, "Neon Golden" convincingly balances the scales of pop and glitch electronics and is the best argument yet for combining the two.
  13. With Neon Golden, The Notwist have done something that's not exactly an easy task; they've created an album that's mixes electronic and organic music in a way that makes each better.
  14. Alternative Press
    80
    Amazing. [Mar 2003, p.92]
  15. The Notwist are, for me, the band New Order never had a good enough singer, or a creative enough programmer, to be.
  16. The intricacy of the band's sound remain[s], but with less experimental desperation and considerably better ideas.
  17. The Notwist are obviously talented enough to keep me guessing if they wanted to. They just don't. They are quite happy making simple pop songs, albeit with complex ingredients.
  18. Uncut
    70
    Neon Golden often comes on like a radical update of New Order's Lowlife period, where mournful guitar songs are integrated into a mesh of clicks, pops, glitches and samples. [Mar 2003, p.96]
  19. What keeps it from being a crackling mess is Markus Acher's sweet, plaintive voice pushing these selected ambient works toward song structure and melody.
  20. Young people who think Kraftwerk were more important than the Ramones are free to satisfy their craving for the neu with this retreat into simplicity. But even Radiohead and Mouse on Mars contain more chaos.
User Score
8.7

Universal acclaim- based on 73 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 66 out of 73
  2. Negative: 5 out of 73
  1. Jan 25, 2019
    5
    Prosaic and overly precious by today's standards, the fact that Neon Golden hasn't aged well certainly has less to do with the album's contentProsaic and overly precious by today's standards, the fact that Neon Golden hasn't aged well certainly has less to do with the album's content (remarkably novel upon release), and more to do with the course the album charted (one so influential that it seems almost as if it didn't happen and had always simply been, and one that such a mind-numbing number of musicians have subsequently followed in its wake as to become practically de riguer). The sad fact remains: Neon Golden is a victim of its own success, accruing contempt through familiarity of its approach as the years wear on. Full Review »
  2. Jan 25, 2012
    9
    The Notwist swirl through ambient pastiche with this album and Markus Acher's vocals keep it going with little to no ease. I felt a Kid A vibeThe Notwist swirl through ambient pastiche with this album and Markus Acher's vocals keep it going with little to no ease. I felt a Kid A vibe throughout the whole album. Each song fits perfectly in this album. A- Full Review »
  3. SethN
    Nov 22, 2007
    10
    Awesome, cant believe I had to listen through the whole track. Once I heard the first song, it was unfortunate that I was just sitting in my Awesome, cant believe I had to listen through the whole track. Once I heard the first song, it was unfortunate that I was just sitting in my car in the drive way and didn't even want to get out. Full Review »