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These Four Walls
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These Four Walls Image
Metascore
72

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
8.6

Universal acclaim- based on 20 Ratings

  • Summary: The debut album for the Scottish indie-rock quartet.

Top Track

It's Thunder and It's Lightning
Right foot Followed by a left foot We'll guide you home before your curfew and into your bed Standing on our tip-toes Peering through open windows I... See the rest of the song lyrics
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Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
  1. The A.V. Club
    91
    These Four Walls is like a 50-minute, 11-song tour through the Scottish scene’s past, present, and future, emphasizing how much of the country’s best pop music has been concerned with transporting listeners to specific places, so we can all linger there together.
  2. Prefix Magazine
    80
    These Four Walls retains its charm, even when Thompson goes to the well perhaps one too many times with the line repetition trick.
  3. musicOMH.com
    80
    These Four Walls is rousing, pop-like in its immediacy and pretty damn enjoyable.
  4. New Musical Express (NME)
    70
    Sure, this isn’t going to frighten the rabbits just yet, but they do occupy a beguiling space between playful celtic reverie and the pits of drone-rock hell.
  5. Pitchfork
    67
    They don't have the lyrical complexity of the bands that they will be compared to (from a young U2 to the aforementioned Frightened Rabbit), but they do have the energy and that's a promising place to start.
  6. PopMatters
    60
    You don’t doubt the sincerity, but it sometimes seems a bit too earnest, a bit hard to swallow, for these ears at least. Still, a promising debut, and I’ll bet they’re ace live.
  7. AllMusic
    60
    At times, WWPJ do give into their dour side too much, and while there's no denying that their dynamic shifts and all-or-nothing climaxes pack a punch, songs such as 'This Is My House, This Is My Home' and 'It's Thunder and It's Lightning' get repetitive. Fortunately, as These Four Walls unfolds, WWPJ show that they can do more than just anthemic angst.

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User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. IsaacA
    Jul 15, 2009
    10
    With a Scottish drawl akin to The View they combine the pop know-how of Snow Patrol, the talent for the slow-burning epic of Sigur Ros, and With a Scottish drawl akin to The View they combine the pop know-how of Snow Patrol, the talent for the slow-burning epic of Sigur Ros, and the driving guitar work of Biffy Clyro.… Expand
  2. EliasK.
    Jul 12, 2009
    5
    Dull and staged. You keep waiting for these songs to break through and explode with some kind of energy but they fall flat.

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