Silver & Gold [Boxset]
- Sufjan Stevens
- Band Name: Sufjan Stevens
- Record Label: Asthmatic Kitty
- Release Date: Nov 13, 2012
- Critic Score
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Dec 21, 2012100Part of its success is due to Stevens' uniquely ambivalent position, at once ingenious and ingenuous.
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Dec 13, 201289With more than two-and-a-half hours of music and enough extras to keep children of all ages occupied deep into the long winter's night, Stevens once again pulls off a wondrously wide-eyed antidote to the boring Christmas album.
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Dec 7, 201280Overall the compilation makes its way towards a bigger story of many ideas, emotions and textures.
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Nov 26, 201278Unlike the meticulously pleasant Songs for Christmas, which more or less sounds exactly like what a casual fan (or detractor) might expect a Sufjan Stevens Christmas box set to sound like, the music inside Silver & Gold can be as downright strange as its accompanying accessories.
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Nov 26, 201275It's an ugly, beautiful, totally fascinating Christmas album, made by the only artist crazy enough to tackle the season in all its sprawling absurdity.
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Dec 17, 201270The darkness that gripped Stevens during his last outing seems to be still tugging at his heels. But compelling as those moments are, more fun are the tracks where he puts his expansive imagination to use and lets go a little.
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Dec 11, 201270Inspired, frustrating, wayward, indulgent, funny, heartfelt and eclectic, taken in one sitting it's far too much, like gorging on the most excessive turkey dinner with all the trimmings. [Jan 2013, p.97]
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Dec 11, 201270Some of the fun songs work on a larger scale and bear repeating.
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Dec 5, 201270It's very odd, varies wildly in tone and has its fair share of clunky bits, but it's all done in the spirit of fun and is always endearingly sincere.
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Nov 26, 201270All in all, Silver & Gold makes for a nice paring with Stevens' previous Xmas box set collection Songs for Christmas.
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Dec 13, 201260So much, in other words, that wading through it feels as much of a chore as a joy.
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Nov 26, 201260For the most part, Silver & Gold stays true to Stevens' predilection for kitchen sink, lo-fi chamber pop, but he plays fast and loose with the formula.
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Nov 26, 201260We're given a playful, fun, but ultimately unrewarding compilation for anyone other than completionists.