- Record Label: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
- Release Date: Feb 12, 2021
Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
UncutFeb 11, 2021New Fragility is emotionally fraught but musically generous. [Mar 2021, p.28]
-
Feb 11, 2021Throwing a light on the minutiae of his fraying psyche doesn’t always make for the easiest of listens. No longer buoyed by adolescent concerns, Alec Ounsworth may not be in the happiest of states. But if you heed closely you’ll hear the sound of one man’s combing for moral redemption amidst societal and individual collapse. And that deserves applause.
-
Feb 11, 2021While one can certainly hear touchstones echoed throughout New Fragility, it has the singularity and focus of one artistic voice.
-
Feb 11, 2021This batch is as tuneful and accessible as anything Ounsworth has written so far.
-
Mar 12, 2021His performances are impassioned, though sometimes slightly tedious, adding strings and keys over scruffy folk-rock. Ounsworth even alludes to his past brush of fame on CYHSY, 2005, though what we really get are broad, everyday depictions of the mundane.
-
Feb 17, 2021On the whole, Ounsworth’s candor gives New Fragility a necessary charge as he leans into balladry.
-
Rolling StoneMar 4, 2021His warbled ballads are teeth pulls, but his crisp, catchy alt-pop zone outs remain undeniable. [Mar 2021, p.73]
-
Feb 12, 2021New Fragility is an easy album to dismiss, especially when it’s such low-stakes (old band, low-key release), but it’s even easier to just enjoy it for what it is.
-
Feb 11, 2021Winding orchestral flights propel ‘Innocent Weight’, in part redeeming an effort that covers little in the way of new ground, while timely lyrical takes command attention yet lack the frequency to shake off neighbouring songs sinking under their own unwieldy mass.