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The Bar At The End Of The World Image
Metascore
60

Mixed or average reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: This is the second LP for the band that was once Spiritualized--that is, before Jason Pierce fired them and hired a new Spiritualized.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 6
  2. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. Alternative Press
    60
    Unfortunately, as with many Verve albums, Bar's dreamy tempos and strung-out riffs, while fragile and beautiful, start to fade into a middling mess of sameness around the middle of the disc. [March 2003, p.98]
  2. Magnet
    60
    Play[s] like a remember-the-'90s rundown. [#58, p.98]
  3. The real problem is that Lupine Howl doesn't really do enough here to distinguish itself from other bands, drawing from such obvious influences as the Rolling Stones and the Doors, and in a lot of ways the album sounds like a tour of '90s retro-influenced bands like the Charlatans, Oasis, or even the Black Crowes.
  4. Q Magazine
    60
    An eerily precise facsimile of the grandiose, broken-down dream rock of The Verve.... Close your eyes and it could be 1997 again. [Nov 2002, p.105]
  5. Uncut
    60
    Plaintive desert rock and gilded chamber pop with heart and poise. [Nov 2002, p.122]
  6. True to form, The Bar at the End of the World is an all or nothing album. From its first moment, it is bombastic, pompous, obscure to the point of disturbing.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. gregh
    Feb 24, 2003
    10
    wicked