Takes

A 1991-2001 covers record is an odd move after just two solo albums, but he carries it off with unusual choices and twinkling instrumentation. [June 2008, p.137]

While this probably won't go down as Adem's greatest work (he's too talented a songwriter in his own right for that to happen), it makes for a nice curio.

Takes never truly shakes the initial notion of a missed opportunity: failing to place a distinguishable spin on the material it seeks to celebrate, ultimately coming off a well-intended curio ticking as many boxes as it omits.

Give Adem his props for chancing a foray into the cover album field, a move which always carries its risks. But Takes simply doesn’t warrant much attention, no matter how much its material means to its creator.

Takes’ boldest move and its artistic centrepiece must be the mashing up of Aphex Twin’s positively scary To Cure A Weakling Child and Boy/Girl Song into a melodious lullaby.

Takes could have used a few more experiments of this nature, because while his versions of the Breeders’ 'Invisible Man' and Yo La Tengo’s 'Tears Are in Your Eyes' are tasteful enough, there’s no real sense of adventure, no real feeling that these songs needed to be covered in this way, no real attempt at making this anything other than a stopgap between records.