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Mar 6, 2012With Open Your Heart, the Men achieve the elusive balance of growing their sound without diluting the intensity and attitude that made them great in the first place, weaving together their influences with fresh ears and a nuanced touch, making for one of the year's most satisfying listens.
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Mar 15, 2012With flashes of post-hardcore ferocity, country-fried slipperiness, and surf-rock hedonism bundled together in a full-throttle hook machine, Heart dances, burns, and most importantly, rocks.
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Mar 16, 2012Rather than insolently demanding your attention as most rock albums do, Open Your Heart possesses a wonderfully self-indulgent, insular quality.
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Mar 7, 2012Open Your Heart is incredibly intricate and technically masterful.
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Mar 13, 2012It is a bright and rousing thing.
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Mar 8, 2012The Men may not be hailed as the genre's saviors, nor should they be, but here they have done an excellent job as its purveyors.
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Apr 19, 2012With amps that are allowed to breathe with static and reverb, drums that clatter against a harsh delivery and with vocals that are unhinged and undeterred, the 'raw' adjective is a fitting superlative.
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Mar 30, 2012It's just as loveably imperfect as its predecessor. The only shame is that it isn't more so.
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Mar 5, 2012While the overall sound here isn't exactly unrecognizable from the band on Leave Home, there's definitely way more going on in terms of range and risk-taking.
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Mar 6, 2012Open Your Heart's greatest triumph is its ability to hearken back without feeling retro.
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Mar 5, 2012A mainline noise-punk onslaught that roundly refused to cease and desist.
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MojoApr 19, 2012A more tasteful affair [than Leave Home], tapping into the 1980s underground's collegiate, powerpop end... plus straight-ahead rock-n-roll holler. [May 2012, p.82]
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Mar 5, 2012Open Your Heart is breezier and more tuneful than its predecessor, but this is very relative.
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Mar 7, 2012I don't think it would be a stretch to say The Men were picking up where The Replacements left off.
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Mar 15, 2012It's indie rock that actually rocks. From Brooklyn no less.
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Mar 5, 2012Open Your Heart is smartly sequenced to metabolize genre and morph like a masterful DJ mix, subtly rationing out its true peaks even while seemingly going full-throttle throughout.
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Apr 18, 2012This album is worth a listen. It's too watered down to stand the test of time, but right now, it hits the spot.
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Mar 8, 2012It's an album that purges the nastiness of its predecessor and switches things up enough without sacrificing its power, a template that hopefuly they remember to follow.
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Mar 12, 2012There's a tender heart beating beneath the evil distortion and punishing blitz.
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Mar 14, 2012Open Your Heart shows off a hugely expanded range of influences and an unerring sense of pacing.
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Mar 21, 2012Open Your Heart improves the band's focus even as it widens its range, ditching the harrowing, hacking-death-cough stuff and reaching for something more.
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Mar 5, 2012A phenomenal record by a band at a creative peak that's as fully realized and as utterly terrific as the myriad other peaks they've hit during their brief but already illustrious career.
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Mar 6, 2012With Open Your Heart, The Men have taken that breath. And it's only made their hearts beat faster.
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Mar 21, 2012One of the more interesting rock albums in recent memory.
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Mar 22, 2012It's a spirited distillation of three decades of leftfield rock tactics that has its pretty moments and its fearsome ones.
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Mar 13, 2012Open Your Heart is the most thrilling and exciting album of the year thus far and one that demands your immediate attention.
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Mar 6, 2012The Men have decided to gift us with yet another 10 glorious songs.
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UncutApr 6, 2012You won't find it hard to reciprocate Open Your Heart's approach. [May 2012, p.79]
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Mar 6, 2012With Open Your Heart, the group refine things just enough--adding a drummer to free up the two-guitar assault, and backing off the recording distortion enough to widen the fan base a couple percentage points.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 27
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Mixed: 1 out of 27
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Negative: 2 out of 27
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Aug 25, 2022
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Mar 15, 2022
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Jul 18, 2019