by
Foxygen
- Record Label: Jagjaguwar
- Release Date: Jan 22, 2013
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Jan 25, 2013In the end, however, the album's coherence comes in its incredible architecture of all these ideas, and the way the band sells them with everything they've got, taking what could be incredibly obtuse music back into the realm of pop from which it was born.
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Jan 22, 2013We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic delivers on the promise of Foxygen's previous material in almost every way possible, offering up full and complete songs filled with bright instrumentation and enough surprising songwriting turns to get lost in, but there's also a strong personality at its core bursting with a vibrancy that carries these songs beyond their specific musical waypoints and influences into a uniquely modern setting.
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Jan 22, 2013The more time you spend with Ambassadors, the more clearly that commitment and joy comes through.
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Feb 11, 2013With We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, Foxygen is a breath of fresh air, reviving a vintage style of songwriting in a new and creative fashion.
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Jan 22, 2013While the more unhinged moments tend to overshadow sugary, buttery pop songs like "No Destruction" (even with the delicious jab: "There's no need to be an asshole / You're not in Brooklyn anymore"), the softer moments balance out the record's tidy nine tracks.
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Feb 15, 2013It’s a rewarding mixture of romance, wit and fantasy.
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Feb 11, 2013The more intelligible lyrics and mid-fi production keep things entertaining and give it the feeling of a fully fleshed-out work.
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Feb 8, 2013The record is a jukebox boiled down to its greatest hits, a playground romp through the back-pages of pop music history, and in this case, the journey is well worth taking.
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MojoFeb 6, 2013Playfully eccentric, it pushes the boundaries of the psych-pop revival in a way that's thankfully more redolent of MGMT's Congratulations than Ariel Pink's more self-conscious "mature" themes. [Mar 2013, p.88]
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Jan 24, 2013Foxygen is never overpowered by its influences.
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Jan 22, 2013Peace & Magic marks the duo out as genuine oddities, music makers full of irreverence, wit, silliness, wild experimentalism, genuine musical brilliance and weirdness.
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Jan 22, 2013We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic is a great full-length debut that is far more than a nostalgia trip.
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Jan 22, 2013It's a bit frantic, but always spot-on; the band nails each retro style closely, and yet manages to channel them all into one new vision that's wholly Foxygen.
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Feb 15, 2013This unpredictable first effort is a stirring paean to the golden age of rock.
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Feb 1, 2013Despite the strength of this first offering, you can’t help but feel Foxygen haven’t quite reached their full potential.
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Jan 29, 2013It's sugar-rush shambolic, somewhat shallow, it won't change your life and pours nothing new into the Cauldron Du Rock. But it's also an entertaining riot of gleeful joy and youthful energy.
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Jan 22, 2013For many listeners, Foxygen's influences will sound tired. But as they plunder the past, they're enjoying themselves, and the enthusiasm on this messy collection of songs is infectious.
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Jan 22, 2013For a band that just started writing pop songs, this sophomore LP is an impressive outing.
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Jan 22, 2013These songs don't linger too long, and the album--with its 36-minute runtime--feels efficient and complete.
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Mar 13, 2013Every subtlety comes steeped in retro classicism.
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Feb 11, 2013Just as it really gets going and starts shining, it splutters and finishes, leaving a sort of empty feeling.
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Jan 22, 2013As this bold magpie of an album flies past, its swagger falters occasionally as genre pastiches gain the upper hand.
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Jan 30, 2013Sadly, the interesting ideas fall at the place on the spectrum where it jives for just a short time, at least for this particular listener.
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Jan 23, 2013There's certainly scant magic here.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 55 out of 60
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Mixed: 5 out of 60
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Negative: 0 out of 60
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Sep 14, 2013
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Aug 16, 2015
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Dec 28, 2013