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Dec 22, 201090Their stupendous debut full-length, The Fool, triangulates Moon Pix–era Cat Power's ghostly, morbid, gorgeous bedroom folk with the Slits' lithe, muscular post-punk.
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Oct 25, 201090Warpaint's is a different darkness, not delighting in splendour or show, but in deftly exploring a bleak internal, romantically bereft landscape.
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Oct 27, 201088The Fool feels like a séance, with guitarist Emily Kokal and her fellow female vocalists focusing their ghostly calls on a mysterious you.
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Oct 26, 201083Despite all evidence to the contrary over the past 30 years, post-punk doesn't have to be built out of cold, sharp angles. The Fool, the full-length debut by Los Angeles' Warpaint, coasts instead on a humid, hazy, oozing pulse that's less ice age and more malarial swamp.
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Nov 17, 201082With a hypnotic sound, magical mood and some Cat Power-inspired fairy-like vocals, L.A. based Warpaint has created a debut album to fall in love with-and to.
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Jan 11, 201180With a sound that comes off as natural, Warpaint represents a much needed departure from the ubiquity of synth-pop, and The Fool is a welcome detour.
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Nov 5, 201080Brooding is the word for their claustrophobic jams, forged on skeletal guitar lines and smothered in reverb. [Dec. 2010, p. 112]
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Nov 5, 201080This band's charms are elusive, indeed, but uniquely compelling. [Dec. 2010, p. 99]
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Nov 4, 201080The beautiful skeleton of a shoe-gazing album.
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Nov 3, 201080The Fool, which took nearly six years to finalize, incorporates coastal psych and voluminous noise-pop with a dash of Spector-flecked harmonies.
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Oct 28, 201080While not perfect, The Fool is a very promising début that grows in stature on every listen. If you're willing to put the time in, this could easily live up to the hype.
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Oct 27, 201080The Fool rewards at almost every step of the way with its experimental touches.
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Oct 27, 201080Shimmering psychedelic post-punk to get lost into.
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Oct 25, 201080Nine songs and 47 minutes long, their album debut feels like wandering through desert plains and darkened streets, tumbleweed at your feet and in your brain.
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Oct 21, 201080The Fool is built on Joy Division's post-punk low end, moody chords, droning vocals, and doomy lyrics, but it's more than a tribute.
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Oct 21, 201080There is something subtly contrary about this band: their most enigmatic song bears the name Warpaint, while their least-composed song – which opens in a fury of shouted vocals and uncoils in a meandering jam of slowly detuned guitars – is called Composure.
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Nov 1, 201079Warpaint is Chillwave rendered Actual via the performance of actual instruments, rendered Credible via the presence of an actual rhythm section, full of big austere drums interwoven with deeply locked-in bass lines, and rendered Sexy via the music's performance by real life, actually sexy, adult humans.
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Oct 28, 201078Restraint is what makes The Fool so smart.
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Oct 27, 201075In the end, The Fool's success comes in not cutting corners. No moment here settles for the cheap thrill, and in building these songs -- carefully,and each with its own distinct materials -- Warpaint comes off as an awfully confident band, one you should be listening to more often.
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Oct 29, 201072While The Fool doesn't fully capture their brain-melded performances, it's a worthy simulacrum.
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Dec 23, 201070They instead favor the resplendence of melody and an astonishing grasp of songwriting prowess, and the overall effect is dazzling. [Year End 2010, p.74]
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Dec 20, 201070Warpaint's songs are pensive and elegiac, transmuting the jabs of yesteryear into folky incantations.
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Dec 15, 201070While able to raise the hair on the back of your neck, The Fool, like many monstrous creations, sometimes lacks the necessary intelligence to be fully alive.
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Nov 4, 201070The Fool spends eight tracks scaling the mountain and the ninth jumping off.
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Oct 29, 201070The Fool often sounds like it was assembled by a spectacularly talented committee, like the minutes of the recording sessions are probably filed away in a sterile LA duplex somewhere.
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Oct 27, 201070The real action on Warpaint's full-length debut happens in the tension between the music's ethereal boil and singer-guitarist Emily Kokal's lyrical evocations of all-too-human anxiousness.
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Oct 26, 201070In spite of its shortcomings, this is a strong first record.
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Oct 25, 201070There's enough promise and originality within the current scene to merit considerable credibility.
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Oct 29, 201060Their The Fool traces out similar shapes as east coast cousins Effi Briest: dreamy, faintly pagan psychedelia, their tumbling vocal harmonies, undercut by inexorable, tidal bass. Their softly-softly approach does breed some earworms, though. [Dec 2010, p.104]
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Oct 25, 201060The Fool has flashes of brilliance, but Warpaint need to play to their strengths consistently.
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Nov 3, 201054Willowy Los Angeles art-rock group Warpaint summons a remarkably heady atmosphere on its debut album, The Fool, which follows a buzzed-about EP released last year on Los Angeles-based indie Manimal Vinyl.
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Oct 26, 201050The Fool brims with potential for something more substantial, but never confronts those depths.
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Oct 27, 201040While The Fool has clear focus and crafts a particular sound, the music fails to resonate emotionally.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 4
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Mixed: 0 out of 4
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8Well crafted tracks that make some emotional penetration. Great vocals, solid album.
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