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Dec 17, 2013Uncanney Valley looks like a Dismemberment Plan record and largely sounds like a Dismemberment Plan record. But yet, it’s not a Dismemberment Plan record. Not a very good one, anyway.
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Oct 30, 2013Uncanney Valley is an enjoyable and accomplished record.
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Oct 29, 2013An agitated yet hook-heavy affair, these 10 cuts feel like an act reacquainting itself, slipping into a creative comfort zone that still requires a little polish.
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Oct 28, 2013The saving grace of Uncanney Valley is its resolute tenderness, an emotion the band never coaxed out of their twenty-something gloom.
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Oct 25, 2013Synths take a higher precedence this time round: it’s an indie-pop record, far from their post-hardcore roots; indeed Living in Song sounds like an Architecture in Helsinki knockoff. But even when you can hear the band trying out new things, it simply sounds turgid.
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Oct 22, 2013Full of dull riffs and saggy rhythms, Uncanney Valley makes you wonder why exactly frontman Travis Morrison reunited the group in 2011.
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MagnetOct 18, 2013"Invisible" offers spacy prog; "Waiting" could be a sitcom theme song, and "Living in Song" and "Mexico City Christmas" are slinky, murky and devo-ish. There are also rapid-fire, traditional indie rockers and happy summer jams. [No. 103, p.55]
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Oct 17, 2013Morrison turns his ever-honest eyes towards fatherhood and commitment, while the band balance his emotional vulnerability on thin lines of guitar, dangling the whole thing over a churning ocean of rhythm.
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Oct 17, 2013Despite the full dismissal of punk roots here--the blended-in drumming, the lack of rollercoaster twists and turns in the tempos and time signatures--Uncanney Valley's only real stumbles are lyrical.
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Oct 16, 2013Uncanney Valley seems too bent on interrupting serious moments with corny jokes and bewildering asides to say much of anything about anyone else.
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Oct 16, 2013Truthfully, it’s not that bad of a record by usual standards, I suppose. It’s just that this is the D-Plan, after all, and you’re expecting something better.
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Oct 15, 2013The artistic liberty of neglecting to ease anyone in to a new incarnation of the same band is wholly admirable. The result, however, is pretty uneven.
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Oct 15, 2013Uncanney Valley is curiously conflict-free--and for a band that always thrived on friction, that can make for a frustrating listen.
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Oct 15, 2013The band is so good together, though, and sound so at peace and at ease knocking these songs out, that it makes it hard to even dislike the record, problems though it may have.
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Oct 15, 2013The endlessly hooky Valley veers from funk-furnished, thrashing tragicomedies ("Waiting") to springy eulogies for the past.
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Oct 14, 2013Rather than nervy and isolated, this re-formed version of the band feels like they've got things more sorted out, replacing the uncertainty that marked albums like Emergency & I with a more carefree vibe. The change is one that makes sense, though.
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Oct 14, 2013It’s fun, but not the comeback it could have been.
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Oct 14, 2013It's an album that, smartly, neither embraces the past as empty nostalgia nor ignores the events of the past 12 years.
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Oct 11, 2013While not a failure, Uncanney Valley isn’t the glorious comeback many were expecting.
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Alternative PressOct 10, 2013[Travis Morrison's] earworm melodies and piquant lyrical outlook are Uncanney's only source of nutrients. The rest are empty calories. [Nov 2013, p.94]
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Oct 10, 2013Morrison’s occasional lyrical forays into cheeseball territory can detract from the record, but taken as a whole there’s more to like here than there is to hate.
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Oct 10, 2013This is verse-chorus-verse as pleasantly intuitive as it comes, thematically light yet with enough room for the musicians to show their considerable skill.
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Oct 10, 2013Pay no attention to the lyrics (pretend you’re foreign or something), concentrate on the music, and you might just enjoy yourself after all.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 10
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Mixed: 1 out of 10
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Negative: 1 out of 10
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Oct 16, 2013
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Oct 15, 2013