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Apr 22, 2011She tosses jazz, folk, R&B, hip-hop and whatever else strikes her fancy into fascinating collisions that are as melodic as they are abrasive, and as globally minded as they are distinctly urban.
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Apr 21, 2011Garbus is a "new kinda woman," declares closing track, "Killa," and it's about damn time.
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Apr 18, 2011This is an album that's best aired on headphones, at critical volume.
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Apr 20, 2011Though the album now comes with studio polish and masterful songwriting, W H O K I L L still feels like an underground tape, challenging the listeners with oddball melodic choices.
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Jun 29, 2011On the follow-up to her 2009 breakthrough album, "Bird-Brains," Merrill Garbus (aka Tune-Yards) again creates a clamorous assemblage of warm, overdriven kitchen-sink instrumentation, field hollering, layered stacks of processed vocals and a sonic smorgasbord culled from the world cafe-only more so.
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Apr 18, 2011For all its eccentric details and occasionally fractured flow, the songs brim with ecstatic blasts of saxophone and undulating waves of rhythm that suggest Afro-pop's endless groove.
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Apr 18, 2011This is very much her record-it's a fractured gorgeousness, with Garbus embracing her oddness in a gesture of self-love that results in an alarming, startling, fun and playful record.
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May 4, 2011w h o k i l l is probably the most inviting album you'll hear this year.
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Apr 18, 2011We just get to experience the full potential and realization of her creativity, which fortunately encountered technology apt enough to record it.
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May 23, 2011This is heavy and intense music that I find difficult to call pop. She deserves better.
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Apr 18, 2011One can only hazard a guess as to what her next venture will sound like, but if whokill is anything to go by, tUnE yArDs' prospects are endless.
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Apr 18, 2011There's a freedom in her voice and a joy that is apparent.
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Apr 19, 2011She deploys her superb music to address an issue so pressing few can stand to think about it: who kills who?
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MojoJun 21, 2011Genre-hopping in style with one-woman band Merrill Garbus. [July 2011, p. 114]
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Apr 18, 2011In a year that's already been rather special for great albums, Merrill Garbus may well have produced the finest record of the year.
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Apr 21, 2011It's as if Garbus is powered by primal, wrong-righting spirits that click like a force of nature.
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May 2, 2011The bizarre take on folk, pop and anything else she sees fit is enchanting, joyful and thought provoking; it's everything at once.
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Apr 18, 2011You can sense that she's still a bit uncomfortable flirting with pop music, and hides the most accessible and melodic songs in the second half of the album. Then again, if you can't deal with a few dissonant free jazz horn explosions, you probably weren't going to pick up this record anyway.
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Apr 18, 2011This unguarded, individualistic expression encourages strong identification in listeners, so don't be surprised if this record earns Garbus a very earnest and intense cult following.
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Apr 19, 2011Truer words were never uttered to describe tUnE-yArDs, though if you didn't know that before you got to the end of w h o k i l l, you weren't listening closely enough to it.
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Apr 19, 2011Garbus might be more known right now as a magnetic performer, but w h o k i l l proves she's just as beguiling on record.
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Q MagazineMay 18, 2011For all the sonic bricolage, nothing upstages Garbus's own force of personality: her vocal range thrillingly from demure cooing through sassy funk to lung-bursting holler. [May 2011, p.126]
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Apr 18, 2011It all hangs together thanks to Garbus' voice, which slides seamlessly from Joplin-esque howls to delicate coos.
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Apr 29, 2011A tremendous leap forward from Tune-Yards' previous efforts, w h o k i l l proves that Garbus isn't just a brainy artiste with a killer voice, but an event, someone to take notice of, a new center of gravity in the musical underground.
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Apr 20, 2011The songs are more consistent, too, flashing a certain lyrical swagger, careening from terrific sex to celebratory violence to uncomfortable cultural realities.
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Apr 19, 2011Whokill's sonic imagination outlasts the novelty of Tune-Yards' debut, and even better, a lyrical persona as playfully warped as the rhythms punching away behind it.
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May 25, 2011w h o k i l l may be strange on first pass, but only by its uniqueness, a music whose microgenre would disappear in a whiff were Ms. Garbus to have never stumbled upon it within her.
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Apr 18, 2011Whereas the musical and lyrical boldness of her 2009 debut, Bird-Brains, was a little muted by her homespun recording techniques, here every fragmenting note and confrontational idea is exhilaratingly crisp.
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May 2, 2011Catchy yet abrasive, noisy yet intimate, kind of funny yet also kind of scary, this is post-pop at its most vertiginously original.
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Apr 19, 2011For all the ups and downs of the lyrics, the music has no doubt that manic creativity and craftsmanship, along with rhythm and noise, are a survival kit.
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Apr 29, 2011On this album, Garbus attempts to do this in a sophisticated and admirable way, and in the very form of her music, she offers a potential solution of a sort.
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UncutApr 21, 2011She has fashioned a still eccentric but bracingly focused collection of songs that blend her acrobatic and soulful Afro-jazz vocals with a collage music that defies any attempts at categorization. [May 2011, p.96]
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May 18, 2011It's truly peerless music. And though Garbus sometimes teeters on the brink of musical bombast, her imagination propels it all forward while avoiding the quicksand of self-indulgence.
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Apr 19, 2011Garbus's engagement is loud and hard to ignore. That she engages without despair is the part I find most admirable of all.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 74 out of 86
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Mixed: 7 out of 86
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Negative: 5 out of 86
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Apr 24, 2011
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Aug 14, 2011
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Apr 26, 2011