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Apr 9, 2013Near as I can hear, all that marks these terrific songs as outtakes etc. is that they're slightly less produced and dramatic.
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Apr 4, 2013RKives begins and ends as a “fans only” endeavor, but the compilation provides an essential supplement to the Rilo Kiley discography.
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Jun 4, 2013Rkives is an excellent time capsule. Here's Rilo Kiley, preserved and earnest and hooky as ever.
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MojoMay 21, 2013Cathartic and beyond satisfying. [Jun 2013, p.102]
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May 7, 2013As a mini-EP of ‘new’ material, these musically diverse tracks are strong enough to make you yearn for the fifth album which will probably never come.
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May 3, 2013The great thing about rkives, though, is that as much as it constitutes an absolute boon for long-time fans, it works as a fine introduction to the band on its own merit.
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Apr 11, 2013Revealing more to outsiders than, say, that entire Nirvana box set, it revels in the seemingly defunct L.A. pop greats' status as old-school virtuosos who turned the new school on.
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Apr 8, 2013Rilo Kiley always had the ability to acknowledge the bad without letting it suck you down. That got lost on the weirdly glossy, distant and jaded Blacklight, but RKives restores the balance.
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Apr 4, 2013While this collection is a welcome, if brief, return to the band's heyday, it naturally doesn't stand on its own as an album.
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May 24, 2013A somewhat random but enjoyable and welcome compilation.
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Apr 4, 2013Rkives is a full-sounding collection that reads like a long-lost Rilo Kiley album from the early-2000s.
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May 21, 2013It's a sad farewell, as this mostly filler-free set of outtakes, demos and b-sides reconfirms.
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May 6, 2013RKives as a whole, hopeful and appreciative above all else, a way for the band and the fans to celebrate what they had one last time before returning to the present, to careers already well into the next phase.
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May 1, 2013Like so much of their previous output, it’s an incredibly bittersweet listen, but this time it’s less about Lewis’ wistful reflections and more to do with rueing what might have been if they’d continued; those first four cuts hint at a genuinely superb record having been in the works pre-split.
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Apr 4, 2013While there’s a lot to love on RKives, as with any postmortem compilation, it runs the risk of lacking cohesion and coming across as a jumble with no common threads.
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Q MagazineMay 13, 2013While it might have been kinder to leave Bury, Bury, Bury Another and Runnin' Around unreleased, much of the rest offers hints at just what a thrilling band they were becoming. [Jun 2013, p.113]
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May 6, 2013Rkives doesn’t shed any light on Rilo Kiley, there’s no standout defining track that was flippantly consigned to a b-side or the vaults. Instead, it’s a collection which provides more satisfaction than surprise.
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UncutApr 25, 2013There are some creative dead-ends, but there is enough here to warrant a reappraisal. [Jun 2013, p.94]
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Apr 8, 2013While plenty of the set is for collectors only, Rilo Kiley has provided a number of songs as strong as their previously released material.
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Apr 4, 2013Rkives rounds up existing rarities--several B-sides and demos--and six unheard songs, plus a remix featuring Too $hort. That is the most radical shift in sound on Rkives but there are hints of the glitzy bombast of Blacklight scattered throughout the collection.
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MagnetMay 10, 2013Even at 16 tracks, RKives feels paltry and incomplete. [No. 98, p.59]