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The Facts Of Life Image
Metascore
82

Universal acclaim - based on 16 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

  • Summary: You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and then you have... the second album from the UK outfit featuring members of the Auteurs and Jesus and Mary Chain. The title track was a Top 20 hit in the UK.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 16
  2. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Sparse, noir-tinged melancholia... If David Lynch should ever film a TV series in England, here are the soundtrack composers.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    83
    The band brings its coolly distant, new-wave pop to 'Life,' building on the rawer sound of their 1999 debut. [4/6/2001, p.120]
  3. Another batch of tunes that entwine gorgeous, intricate arrangements with the dark, intoxicating side of our libidos.
  4. 80
    Though "French Rock'n'Roll" is somewhat lacking in zest (quelle surprise), the care afforded to the rest of this record's conception and execution is obvious.
  5. Luke Haines, of nineties nobodies The Auteurs and Baader Meinhof, together with Sarah Nixey and John Moore, appear to have taken Saint Etienne's 'Like a Motorway' (from 'Tiger Bay') and driven away with it in a battered Ford Escort to a distant destination, a concept album about motorways and travelling.
  6. It's all extremely pretty, and without seeming completely manipulative or cloying. Black Box Recorder, however, are still a bit dopey when it comes to lyrics.
  7. Magnet
    60
    The Facts of Life is a more polished affair, casting vocalist Sarah Nixey's wispy hush into a pool of plucked strings and orchestral flourish -- duly poisoned by some blippy Air trippiness. [#49, p.68]

See all 16 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. BenjaminBunny
    Apr 1, 2004
    7
    "The Art Of Driving," "The English Motorway System" and the title track are the most beautiful, brilliant and wryly moving tracks of this "The Art Of Driving," "The English Motorway System" and the title track are the most beautiful, brilliant and wryly moving tracks of this outfit's career. Unfortunately, the same can not be said of at least a third of the album which, at its worst, delves into overslick and trite examinations of adolescent sexuality. It's definitely worth purchasing for the above-mentioned songs, but keep your finger on the "track-forward" button. Collapse