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Jun 18, 2019Reward is Cate Le Bon’s most emotionally astute record to date, and her melodic prowess is the strongest it’s ever been. With that, Reward sounds like a modern classic, because it has a longevity that very few records possess.
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May 28, 2019This album, though not what anybody on the face of the Earth would call ‘fun’, is an absolute classic of modernist architecture. It’s certainly the best thing she’s ever done.
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May 28, 2019Reward shows Le Bon harnessing a reinterpretation all her own--stretching her range with layers of idiosyncrasies while remaining at the helm as one of today’s most sui generis anomalies.
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May 23, 2019The album is spacious and remarkably constructed, with hidden compartments built for secret sounds that seem to unlock with repeated listenings. Easily Le Bon's most involved, risky, and satisfying material up until this point.
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UncutMay 21, 2019Cate Le bon's terrific run of form continues with what must be her best album. ... She enchants at every turn. [Jun 2019, p.30]
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May 31, 2019Magnificent and starkly candid new album.
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May 28, 2019Her music speaks loudest in its calmest moments, and Reward is an album most remarkable for how it fills its space.
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Jun 8, 2019The looping phrases of Reward are carefully considered and joined with the precision of mortise and tenon. Her songs have always been like small rooms, though they are no longer drafty and rustic. This is a record of tidy natural sounds. They are not immediately inviting, yet spending time in these well-mannered spaces becomes a pleasure.
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May 29, 2019This new work is rather stunning in its shedding of skins and plowing of new furrows. The influences have either been thoroughly shrugged off or thoroughly absorbed, and what we get here is a frankly remarkable set of ten songs that lead us from our comfort zone almost imperceptibly to a very very strange place, and then once more out of the woods and back to more recognizable territory.
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May 24, 2019Reward could easily exist in a decade long since past but become a hidden gem, along the lines of Linda Perhac’s Parallelograms or Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day. Thanks to streaming, far more people will be able to hear it.
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May 23, 2019The enhanced instrumentation and dreamy songwriting make this the singer’s strongest album yet.
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May 23, 2019Reward is appropriately titled. Give it time and it fully reveals itself, getting under your skin in the process.
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May 23, 2019High doses of intricacy and complexity are contained on Reward. It is a record that signals an attempt to find and hold on to meaning in life. Intimate and personal, it is also one where mumbling is the order of the day, and where a lack of clarity is desired, intended and legit.
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May 23, 2019The result is a deeply personal album, at once beautiful and mournful, and rarely straightforward.
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Q MagazineMay 21, 2019It's undoubtedly a sad voice she presents on Reward, but one that is unlike anyone else's. [Jul 2019, p.107]
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May 21, 2019Reward is a lucid rush of avant-pop. Dreamy and sonic echoes, layered with Le Bon's sotto voce lyrics, make this her most compelling album.
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MojoMay 21, 2019Creatively, Reward is on point. [Jun 2019, p.89]
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May 22, 2019Rather than fixing a steady gaze on our isolating and destabilizing present, Reward often taunts, pokes, glances, and winks--gestures that pester and provoke without leaving much of an impression.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 37 out of 43
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Mixed: 3 out of 43
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Negative: 3 out of 43
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Feb 10, 2021
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Jul 9, 2019
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Jun 16, 2019