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Jun 9, 2017Planetarium demands repeated listening, the passages and movements make individual songs stand out less as it is not completely obvious when one track is ending and another is beginning. The record almost sounds modular in the vein of Brian Wilson’s technique on Smile.
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Jun 7, 2017Planetarium does the solar system justice with almost every conceivable sound--from metallic auto-tune to rippling organ, to angelic strings and forceful horns--from four powerful multi-instrumentalists at the top of their respective games.
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Jun 28, 2017For the most part, the record warrants its own expansiveness as themes of self-doubt, isolation and faith slowly supernova among dazzling ambient instrumentals, careening string sections and Sufjan’s warped vocals that bring harmony, hope and futurism to the cold, dense expanse of space.
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Jun 23, 2017Much more than The War Of The Worlds for indie kids, thoroughly recommended.
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Jun 12, 2017The more you listen, the more Planetarium recalls Stevens’s glitchy, Auto-Tuned The Age of Adz album. Myth and science, astrology and astronomy, the personal and the political, religion and the profane commingle.
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Jun 9, 2017The album has clearly been something of a labour of love for its creators, and feels remarkably homogenous for something produced by four highly individual minds via a mixture of live and studio performance over several years. If you like the sound of a big, camp, melodramatic slab of astrological sci-fi shot through with very earthly, twenty-first century hang-ups, Planetarium is a trip.
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Jun 9, 2017In its entirety, the ambition and scope of the project is matched by the combined talent and imagination of four musical friends whose association seemed to just emerge from the ether.
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Jun 8, 2017The result can’t help but sound as if the planets have aligned for Sufjan’s dream musical--but, if you’re a fan, you’ll know that’s glorious.
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Jun 7, 2017Muhly’s sweeping orchestral vista mid-section dominates “Pluto”; and Stevens’ furtive, autotuned description of “Saturn” as a “melancholy creature, paranoid secret” is rudely interrupted halfway through by a brash, bustling beat barging its way in like Donald Trump at a photoshoot. The “oracle ghost” “Venus”, meanwhile, is treated in more recognisably Sufjan style, in its exhumation of a youthful indiscretion at a summer camp, characteristically stirred into a wider lyrical compass.
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UncutJun 7, 2017We'll be lucky if the year yields another headphone album as sumptuous as this one. [Jul 2017, p.30]
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Jun 9, 2017Every listener will have to individually cherry pick the songs that work best for them, but these are the ones that best deliver on the possibilities of the album’s premise.
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Jun 8, 2017To be sure, Planetarium is not perfect. That it hangs together as well as it does is a testament to the considerable talents of the people who created it.
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Jun 16, 2017Although overly padded and repetitious at times, Planetarium is a poignant, adventurous, and highly promising debut; if the quartet can trim the fat in the future, they’ll truly reach their potential.
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Jun 13, 2017It’s not essential in the way Illinois is essential, but fans would be mugging themselves to not at least give it a whirl.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 58 out of 70
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Mixed: 7 out of 70
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Negative: 5 out of 70
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Jun 20, 2017
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Jun 15, 2017
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Aug 15, 2017