These Were The Earlies
- The Earlies
- Band Name: The Earlies
- Record Label: Secretly Canadian
- Release Date: Oct 25, 2005
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
This music is the electronic, Warp-inspired answer to Brian Wilson's 'Smile.' [31 Jul 2004, p.41]
-
An astoundingly accomplished collection of flawlessly interesting and compulsively beautiful songs. [#8, p.109]
-
90An outstanding record which you'd be unwise to miss. [Aug 2004, p.91]
-
The disc alternates between unsettling, exhilarating, and devastating in its emotional impact; it's also difficult not to get distracted by everything going on musically.
-
80A band who aim foolishly high but always return, wings intact. [Sep 2004, p.92]
-
80A work of baroque detail, crossing between Mercury Rev's psychedelic Americana and The Beta Band's bucolic electronica. [Aug 2004, p.110]
-
The Earlies are like a stripped-down take on the [Flaming] Lips: psychedelic, lo-fi and indie in the purest sense of the word.
-
80What's impressive is the way they bring all these elements together, the natural world leading seamlessly into a brighter landscape of surreal otherness.
-
Given that it's a collection of EPs and singles, These Were the Earlies is predictably all over the map, a problem exacerbated by the Earlies' wide-ranging stylistic ambitions and long-distance collaborative methods.
-
79A deliriously ambitious record packed with neo-psych lullabies and swooning choruses.
-
The album still holds together with a surprising cohesiveness, which is essential when crafting a debut that relies far more on the effect of its ambitious whole than any specific genre-bending tracks.
-
A set of saccharine sweet songs which occasionally dissolve spectacularly in a haze of whirring electronic mist.
-
70As a headphone album, 'These Were... The Earlies' is something of a stunner.
-
70Imagin[e] the Beach Boys getting strung out in a field on cider midmorning in some alternative universe Texas, surrounded by retro-sounding DIY synths, a raggedy brass section, and a hippy cello player.
-
It's not half-bad, providing you can get over the fact that the Earlies have yet to find a sound to call their own.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 19 out of 21
-
Mixed: 2 out of 21
-
Negative: 0 out of 21
-
AlexA5Boring and pretentious.
-
JimO'Rourke5Really pretentious and utterly forgettable, aside from 2 songs.
-
LawlessR6some songs have promise, but most of it is damn boring.