- Record Label: Matador
- Release Date: Jan 22, 2013
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- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Jan 11, 2013An album of chilly, detached beauty.
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Feb 11, 2013This is a marked improvement on the density of their first effort, and sounds like a band who have grown very sure of themselves in the best way possible.
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Jan 25, 2013The opposite of a sophomore slump, Wash the Sins Not Only the Face is sleek and spectral, and finds Esben and the Witch casting their spell even more successfully.
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MojoJan 18, 2013Taken as a whole, it's an arresting step towards the light. [Feb 2013, p.90]
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Jan 14, 2013Everything about this album is bigger than what has gone before and reveals an energised band with a real belief in what they're doing. Quite right too.
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Jan 11, 2013Yet at every turn, this new album eschews clichés--any strident shrieking, chanting and cod imagery--for something sleek, fluid and effortlessly modern.
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Jan 11, 2013Where Violet Cries lacked a focal point, Wash The Sins is full of purpose. [Jan-Feb 2013, p.86]
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Jan 22, 2013Although appealing in a fantasy-genre glutton way, the album feels a little one-dimensional.
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Jan 25, 2013Ultimately it's the breaking of a cycle that leads to change and, on this record of both progression and recollection, Esben And The Witch suggest that they haven't yet quite achieved that.
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Jan 22, 2013Call it highbrow, call it highfalutin, but with Wash The Sins, Esben are carving hulking tablets of stone boasting that intellect is nothing to be scared of.
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Jan 22, 2013Esben And The Witch's second LP is a thrilling, goosebump-raising collection of songs that will be in heavy rotation for the rest of the year (and beyond).
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Jan 25, 2013They haven't quite found it yet, but Esben and the Witch have the potential for an arresting and momentous album in them.