Take Me To The Sea
- Jaguar Love
- Band Name: Jaguar Love
- Record Label: Matador
- Release Date: Aug 19, 2008
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Longing for The Blood Brothers (or even, of course, Pretty Girls Make Graves) is as futile as rating a current girlfriend against an ex: while both may have inspired your love, all that truly matters is the here and now. And Jaguar Love are very much of today. There is no turning back.
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It's the sound of three musicians playing to their strengths while challenging their songwriting style, resulting in a cohesive listen that holds your attention to the end. [Sep 2008, p.156]
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90Write off Jaguar Love at your peril; this is one of the best albums of the year so far.
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90If you take a chance on just one record then make sure it’s Take Me To The Sea as it’s possibly the underground triumph of the year.
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The musicianship is mature--a jangly, shifting cornucopia of guitar, bass, organs, and drums--but it is practically ignorable behind the caterwauling wail of Johnny Whitney, which takes precedence over all.
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80Wrapped up in a tidy 10 songs is an album full of kinetic exuberance, rawness and sweat that retains just enough of a pop sensibility to keep things both memorable and erratic.
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If you aren't at least a little cozy to the sound commonly produced by Whitney and company, you certainly won't be any more into Jaguar Love. Well, that may not be totally accurate, as I can see this being some of most accessible stuff spawned by any Blood Brothers alumni.
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For as combustible as they are, the songs are catchy and conducive to repeated listening.
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A few duds aside, the album succeeds as an ecstasy pop update on the Blood Brothers’ delirious chaos and nobody who purports to miss that band should ignore it.
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They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.
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70Johnny Whitney has made an art of singing like a deliriously deaf 12-year-old, but the debut of his new trio with Blood Brothers bandmate/guitarist Cody Votolato and ex–Pretty Girls Make Graves guitarist Jay Clark (now on drums) plays like a preteen daydream.
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68Like the Blood Brothers, Take Me to the Sea is united by Whitney's voice, impossible to ignore as it slides between seemingly any style that could be described using the verb "wail."
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His voice is annoying the way a fuzz guitar is overdriven: That's its point. Getting past it isn't always easy, but it can be rewarding as Whitney proved with his prior band, Seattle's Blood Brothers, and demonstrates intermittently at the head of Jaguar Love.
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60Johnny Whitney's helium-pumped, Brian Molko-meets-Freddie Mercury squeal is very much an acquired taste--perhaps for some it will prove insufficuently offset by his bandmates' post-punk adventurism. [Sep 2008, p.92]
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Jaguar Love inject a vicious vitality into their neon-hued rock, and the idea of a dance punk with real fury behind the party is appealing. But in order to avoid being merely irritating or simply diverting, Jaguar Love could benefit from fully unhinging, with an increase in wrath.
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Take Me to the Sea [is] a cross between sloppy prog-rock and emo that ends up being less than a sum of its parts.
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If you like your rock tight, shrill, and speedy, this one could be for you. Problem is, as rendered, Jaguar Love's spastics are at war with groove and less than supportive of their progressive ambitions. [Fall 2008, p.86]
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40He can make a sweet music, as on the soulful warble of 'Georgia,' but on most of the other occasions when Votolato's choppy riffs and off-beam melodies threaten to seduce you, Whitney's caterwaul butts in again. [Sep 2008, p.110]
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40Two minutes in, that opening song plummets into a mire of self-indulgence - and that's where the rest of the album stays.
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40It’s not bad in the sense its unredeemable, just in the sense that it fails to do what it wants to really, really hard.
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36This is an incredibly abrasive album.... There's screaming on this album, lots of it...nay, way too much. [Summer 2008, p.102]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 5
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Mixed: 2 out of 5
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Negative: 1 out of 5
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EricH.5Take Me to the Sea has its moments, but overall is extremely mediocre compared to its members' past releases.
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gentlemanphilosophy5
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EricL.9