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Oct 21, 2010The Way Out provides the best introduction yet to The Books' nerdy experiments, but also to the duo's grand, goofy emotional range.
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Oct 21, 2010If there's a lesson to be learned from The Way Out, it's that we need little more than the sounds of each other's voices to find comfort--or in the Books' case, to crank out yet another masterwork.
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Oct 21, 2010It's part of the final duality that makes The Way Out a success: learning how it was constructed is fascinating, but it's equally enthralling to go into it completely ignorant.
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Oct 21, 2010It's an undefinable musical culmination of our collective conscious-reminding us that the more we've changed, the more we've stayed the same.
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Oct 21, 2010On The Way Out, their fourth and most dazzling work to date, the duo strikes an ideal balance between found-sound collage and original vocalizations.
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Oct 21, 2010Like any Books album, The Way Out is best embraced as a headphones record, but it could also work at a party, on a morning commute, over dinner, under a squeaking bedframe--it's the poppiest ambient album I've heard in some time, surprisingly accessible given the band's track record.
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Oct 21, 2010The Books have always been both playful and serious, but their latest album moves between the two easily and without making the listener take note. It is so subtle that even when paying attention, it still feels natural.
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Oct 21, 2010The Books have found their way out of convention, and they've been kind enough to invite us all along with them.
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Oct 21, 2010By the time it comes to a close, The Books have taken us on a journey through space and time, and it's hard not to feel full, invigorated by a unique sort of listening experience that's perhaps best described by The Way Out's closing words: "And you're becoming the world and everyone in it."
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Oct 21, 2010This first album in five years from aural collage artists Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong is immensely listenable, as serene as it is unclassifiable.
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The WireOct 21, 2010The duo fashion a collection of bright funny and often extremely beautiful songs that bristle with invention. [Aug 2010, p.58]
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Oct 21, 2010The stated intention for The Way Out was for each track to be "its own rabbit hole," and the album does indeed manage to survey an impressively disparate set of worlds and modes.
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Oct 21, 2010That stuff was fun on their debut, 2002's Thought for Food, but today those easy jokes seem like a waste of their skills. Better to seek out the greater mystery of those weird and splendiferous sounds, and those voices that seem so close and so unknowable in the same breath.
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Oct 21, 2010This electronic-folk duo, in the likeness of bohemian hedonists, turns meticulous attention-to-detail into bounding creativity--and something unequivocally bookish.
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Oct 21, 2010The Books' first album in five years marks the most sophisticated collage yet from the audio-ransacking duo of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong.
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Oct 21, 2010There might be less going on than with the cut-and-paste stuff elsewhere, but ironically that makes these tracks seem like most fully formed moments here, the points of contrast which, as with all successful collages, make The Way Out work as a whole.
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Oct 21, 2010My language admits perhaps this is a weaker record than one would hope for after five years, but my heart can't hide it: this is a worthwhile album for anyone who's heard the band's previous work, or admires the art of Prefuse 73 and other like-minded artists.
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Oct 21, 2010After three consistent, unique albums, the duo only flag when they abandon their sense of humor and mischief -- which is what made them so smart in the first place.
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Oct 21, 2010It's been a long stretch since their last full-length album, 2005's Lost and Safe, but The Way Out exhibits the care the pair takes in meticulously crafting these constructions.
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Oct 21, 2010New York duo the Books continue their tradition of using intriguing vocal samples behind folk-and electronic-based compositions on fourth album "The Way Out." This time around, the group also mixes jazz-fusion with quirky dialogue that ranges from meditation speeches to intimate voice mails.
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MojoOct 21, 2010A teeming sonic bricolage of absurd/disturbing found vocals, bizarre musical fragments and their own art-funk chops, it suggests kinship with Robert Ashley, Aphex Twin and Eno & Byrne. [Sep 2010, p.97]
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Oct 21, 2010Partly cartoon, part Sesame Street, and with a healthy dose of consequence-free childish threats and violence, A Cold Freezin' Night is a welcome distraction to the meandering electro-drone that populates the rest of the album. But from here on in, it's a case of the law of diminishing returns.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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Feb 11, 2022