- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Though some of the songs here, especially the earlier ones, can be quite simple, even raw at times, there's a sad, clean sweetness that comes through despite the occasional bit of tape hiss, of tinny chords.
-
Phrases like "rare talent" are thrown around all the time these days, but this compilation makes painfully clear just how unique and valuable this music is.
-
UncutWhile what was lost with Smith is immeasurable, what he left was amazing, and New Moon is an appropriately spectacular monument. [Jun 2007, p.112]
-
Now it is also clear that Smith joins rank amongst the likes of Pavement or the Clash with a perfectionist ability to craft delightful “throw-away” tracks.
-
What this collection of songs from his mid-'90s creative purple patch shows is that few people in recent times have done sadness so exquisitely.
-
Rolling StoneAs a whole, the collection is as indispensable as Either/Or. [31 May 2007, p.96]
-
What we ultimately get with New Moon feels in part like a Best Of retrospective, but also in part a surreptitious and rather voyeuristic peek at Smith's innermost workings and thoughts.
-
Under The RadarAs hope, there are revealing looks at Smith's developments as a writer. [#17, p.87]
-
The albums Smith released before his probable suicide in 2003 had a bruised, fragile quality, and these sparse songs... are no different.
-
As fan-boy pleasing as this is, and as great as some of the songs are, it still feels a little like sneaking a peek at a director’s first draft, or rummaging through a scribbly, discarded diary.
-
New Moon is thankfully, wonderfully full.
-
SpinThe strongest [tracks]... get to Smith's best impulse: a willingness to find the innocence in life. [May 2007, p.94]
-
Entertainment WeeklyMoon's two cohesive CDs prove as emotionally powerful as anything in his catalog. [1 Jun 2007, p.68]
-
The results, though rarely the caliber of the albums that bookended this era, are a consistent delight.
-
What makes New Moon succeed is something similar to what Shakespeare gets at in many of his sonnets: the ability of art to beat death.
-
Far from a compilation of rough mixes and rejects, any of the songs on this disc -- as spare in sound as they are elegant in form -- would have fit beautifully on a mid-'90s Elliott Smith album.
-
New Moon is a near yearbook, a simple reminder of the talent and fruition of Steven Paul Smith, friend, comedian, and one of the greatest songwriters of this generation.
-
New Moon sounds less like a pile of outtakes than an official album released in a parallel universe.
-
FilterNew Moon is Smith at his musical best: quiet, humble, and most of all, honest. [#25, p.96]
-
The 24 songs... are characteristically and uniformly excellent.
-
BillboardThere are some real gems here. [12 May 2007]
-
It does reveal how thoughtful and meticulously pretty his songwriting was, even on his most intimate recordings.
-
That every track here reinforces that memory of him makes it an unexpectedly fitting tribute.
-
You’d hardly expect songs as strong as these to be in anyone’s wastebasket, but with only a few exceptions the material assembled here is just as, if not more, intimate and honest as anything on those proper albums.
-
Smith's trademark combination of breathy - almost whispered - vocals, deceptively resilient acoustic melodies, and sombrely introspective lyrics, is shown off to sufficiently good advantage here to make New Moon a worthy companion piece to 1995's Elliott Smith and 1997's Either/Or.
-
Despite their disparate origins this is no hotchpotch of leftovers and out-takes.
-
There is nothing tentative or unpolished about any of these songs.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 58 out of 64
-
Mixed: 3 out of 64
-
Negative: 3 out of 64
-
JamesM.Apr 29, 2008
-
LindsayJ.Feb 27, 2008I've been unable to take this album out of my CD player. Beautiful, amazing, rich, powerful...I could go on & on & on.
-
RajuK.Jan 17, 2008