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Replica Sun Machine Image
Metascore
65

Generally favorable reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The sophomore album for the London-based band was produced by Danger Mouse.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 8
  2. Negative: 1 out of 8
  1. It's not what you'd call a forward-looking record--these people have a more than passing familiarity with the early 70s work of David Bowie, and are in thrall to the folky psychedelia of a few years earlier than that--but it's expertly executed and swooningly gorgeous.
  2. Let's hope they carry on with that form of expression, as Replica Sun Machine has created an early blast of summer sunshine--playful, majestic, reflective and content, all in the same record.
  3. If anything, though, what Replica Sun Machine calls to mind is a previous attempt to meld aesthetics from about ten years back, the Beta Band's "Hot Shots II"--it's not a question of exact similarity by any means, but there's a similarly easygoing feel in the arrangements and the beats, something that invites drift and a steady crunch in equal measure.
  4. If anything, it’s the failure to rise above its component parts and create a unique and recognizable sound that keeps Replica Sun Machine from being the breakthrough album this promising trio deserves.
  5. Quietly bucking the trend are The Shortwave Set, whose follow-up to 2005’s The Debt Collection confounds convention by actually being pretty good.
  6. Under The Radar
    40
    While certain tracks capture a melding of The Clientele's lovely melancholy and Southern California psych-pop undertones, the bulk of the album suffers from an an impenetrable mix that simply has too much going on sonically to let the band's sunny songs shine through. [Spring 2009, p.68]
  7. Replica Sun Machine is an exceedingly simple thing--with tunes so familiar-feeling to be easily ignorable--but it's presented with a false sense of intricacy, gussied up and disguised as something more than it really is.

See all 8 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. sandlines
    Jun 8, 2009
    8
    Forgive them (Pitchfork) as sometimes they know not of what they speak. For a while last year this was in VERY heavy rotation. it's Forgive them (Pitchfork) as sometimes they know not of what they speak. For a while last year this was in VERY heavy rotation. it's slipped off there now, but there are some sublime musical moments on this psychadelic romp - the cover paints a good picture of the kaleidoscopic sounds inside. Give it a try with an open mind - you may just find that Pitchfork were talking out of their. Expand