User Score
Universal acclaim- based on 161 Ratings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 145 out of 161
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Mixed: 10 out of 161
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Negative: 6 out of 161
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- Most helpful
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RobbieCFeb 25, 2007Totally over-rated.
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SYanoffDec 30, 2006Good, but not great Decemberists work. Their previous album, Picaresque, remains their best work to date. Still, this album has two of their best songs ever on it: "The Crane Wife 3" and "Sons and Daughters".
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TristramCNov 22, 2006
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DanB.Nov 21, 2006I quite liked most of their first three albums but here something's off, to my ear. Not sure what. It's just... very boring, to me, and a few of the songs actually were really grating. Oh well.
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SavannahCNov 13, 2006The Crane Wife, although not impossible to listen to, sounds uninspired and thoroughly uninteresting. I would give the album a much lower review, but there is nothing technically wrong with this album. Its just really boring.
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RichardSOct 18, 2006
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bryanOct 15, 2006Still better then most things out there but a clear drop from the first 3 albums and The Tain. I can only assume that part of the reason it is getting such high marks is how incredible the earlier work was and how much of a connection people feel with the band (I am one of those people myself). Kind of sad it isn't better...
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danbOct 10, 2006Very mediocre. Their worst. I'm surprised at the acclaim.
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ToddWOct 4, 2006
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Awards & Rankings
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Oddly, the unconventional sequencing and measured pace of the album make the fragmented mess hold together quite well.
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Entertainment WeeklyThe jarring faux-metal riffage of "When the War Came" exposes Meloy's limits, but several of these studies in heartbreak and homicide rank among his most moving. [6 Oct 2006, p.68]
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Most of The Crane Wife consists of rehashes of Decemberists staples and by-the-books, cookie-cutter indie pop that runs the gamut between pleasant enough ("O, Valencia!") and barely tolerable ("Summersong").