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Aug 17, 2015With durable songs, classic melodies, an idiosyncratic manner, wit, and a transportive quality to the arrangements, it'd be greedy to ask much more of a singing songsmith.
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UncutAug 14, 2015[Black's] bright, clear voice supported by lush soundscape of horns, strings and piano. [Sep 2015, p.81]
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Aug 14, 2015Sweet Baboo’s gloriously eccentric back catalogue has nevertheless often hinted at the capacity to deliver a truly special record: a glorious, emphatic collection of songs showcasing his truly affecting vocal and knack for ridiculously insistent hooks. No further hints are required for, with The Boombox Ballads, Black has got there.
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Aug 14, 2015The songs on this album show something less funny but nevertheless meaningful: a songwriter deeply in love, with his wife as well as his life and art.
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MojoAug 25, 2015Some structural confusion aside, it's easy to embrace his Johnny-Flynn-does-indie songs. [Oct 2015, p.98]
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Q MagazineAug 25, 2015In places, The Boombox Ballads is too shambling for its own good. [Oct 2015, p.113]
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Aug 20, 2015The expansive arrangements feel like unnecessary decoration. But on the billowing ‘You Got Me Time Keeping’ and sweet single 'Sometimes' Black's experiment works, injecting new flamboyance into his introverted songcraft.
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Aug 14, 2015The album is far from a lost cause. Sometimes, Two Lucky Magpies, Over And Out and the Bibio-esque titular instrumental are all lovely. But The Boombox Ballads annoys almost as much as it entertains.
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Aug 14, 2015For the most part, this is a record about chasing a specific kind of pop aesthetic instead, which largely comes at the detriment of any kind of real connection.
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Aug 14, 2015There are times Sweet Baboo tilts too far for me towards a certain type of purposeful cute-ness that ends up feeling inauthentic, more of a purposeful surface-level impression than content to grab ahold of.