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When it closes with the eerie, smoky gospel influenced Youlagy, you know it’s fantastic and you know you’ve found the most breathtakingly beautiful album this year.
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The music of Unmap ticks with signature twists and sounds, things that suggest Justin Vernon could be a national treasure on the lines of Neil Young or Elliott Smith instead of the heartbroken one hit wonder that some might have expected.
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The record is too weird to turn heads in quite the same meteoric fashion that Emma did but is a nice addition to Vernon’s canon and an indicator of just how high he can let his freak flag wave and still sound just like himself.
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Despite the looseness and the grab-bag approach, the best of the songs on Unmap feel right as rain, like these weird mash-ups were there all along, just waiting to be discovered.
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'Seeplymouth' is a complex and beautiful song, and one that displays the talents of all the collaborators in Volcano Choir. A lot of people were enamored of "For Emma, Forever Ago" last year; they’ll be well rewarded if Justin Vernon’s involvement leads them to Unmap.
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Perhaps it’ll never earn For Emma‘s unrivaled reputation as being music to hang your hearts and dreams upon, but it’s a dynamic batch of aural wilderness to get lost in. So wander on.
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Unmap seems to have been constructed more for the head than the soul, making it easier to admire for its boldly uncommercial audacity than love for its actual music.
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That it is a beautifully realised set of textures and sounds certainly helps, as does the fact that its keenly abstract, exploratory bent makes any attempted comparisons with his debut album practically meaningless.
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Here we’re given a respite from Bon Iver’s heavy crises while still loving on Bon Iver; here, Volcano Choir is inevitably weightless--a pretty happy band with a pretty happy album.
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Despite being a solid, sometimes gorgeous album of songs from a very well-matched collaboration of artists, Unmap’s ultimate effect will be whetting appetites everywhere for the next Bon Iver record.
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FilterLayered, atmospheric and melodic, each song takes its time and builds effortlessly into the next, creating an ethereal experience that intensifies with each listen. [Fall 2009, p.106]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 13
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Mixed: 4 out of 13
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Negative: 0 out of 13
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Aug 21, 2011
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RyanJ.Oct 2, 2009Pretty overrated, boring, only a few songs are good. But the songs that are good are REALLY GOOD.
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ChristianP.Oct 1, 2009Very exciting and captivating stuff.