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The Thin Black Duke Image
Metascore
87

Universal acclaim - based on 9 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 18 Ratings

  • Summary: The seventh full-length release for the San Francisco experimental rock band is its first in a decade.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 9
  3. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. May 11, 2017
    100
    Thin Black Duke should be regarded as a genuinely innovative and exciting piece of art.
  2. May 25, 2017
    100
    Everything here is on point; every single element is executed with a stupefying mastery. Soaring strings, luxurious French horn, jangled distortion and purgative, unhinged vocals; all these things fuse together with glorious consequences. Utterly exceptional.
  3. May 11, 2017
    90
    Ultimately, Oxbow's seventh full-length is an incredible, cinematic experience which is at once rewarding and terrifying.
  4. Jun 7, 2017
    90
    By rights no group should be peaking after 30 years of making music together, yet that is the situation in which Oxbow find themselves. Will they ever transcend Thin Black Duke? Such are the ideas and attention to detail on this record, only a fool would bet against them.
  5. 80
    The Thin Black Duke isn’t their finest album--for my money, that’d have to be 1995’s Steve Albini-produced Let Me Be A Woman--but it’s still one of the most thrilling, galvanising records I’ve heard in recent months.
  6. The Wire
    Aug 8, 2017
    80
    The record is a meditation on masculinity, both lyrically and musically. But it is a sombre, barely lustful masculinity that growls and shrieks and howls and tells stories here. [May 2017, p.52]
  7. May 11, 2017
    73
    It may not be their definitive show of force, but it’s a dazzling spectacle nonetheless.

See all 9 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of
  2. Mixed: 0 out of
  3. Negative: 0 out of