NOW Magazine's Scores
- Music
For 2,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
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43% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 66
Highest review score: | The Life Of Pablo | |
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Lowest review score: | Testify |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,287 out of 2812
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Mixed: 1,452 out of 2812
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Negative: 73 out of 2812
2812
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Biophilia is one of Bjork's best and most challenging records; it's in a galaxy all its own, one that's not for the faint of heart.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 7, 2011
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At last, everything Escovedo does well is represented on a single disc.- NOW Magazine
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This album is a stylized, slightly-paranoid romp sure to pluck the heartstrings of anyone who has ever lived life with reckless abandon.- NOW Magazine
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Illmatic is timeless because of Nas’s introspective, hyper-detailed approach to his daily life--even to moments that don’t seem particularly notable.- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 22, 2014
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 16, 2015
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Boucher's production prowess, beautifully complex and ambitious songwriting, is self-evident on Miss Anthropocene.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 21, 2020
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Free of misguided anger but with healthy amounts of trademark anxiety and angular riffs, Grace’s expression is powerful.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 16, 2014
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Weariness gives way to willingness as Solange unpacks and ultimately celebrates Blackness, from the politics of Black hair in Don’t Touch My Hair (featuring Sampha) to a reclamation of Black masculinity in Scales (featuring Kelela).- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 11, 2016
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It’s sometimes surprising when you discover that pop songs, as loud and vibrant as they often are, can be quite devastating. This is especially true on Mitski’s excellent fifth album. ... It’s a bold record, rising and falling over the course of 14 tracks.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 17, 2018
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Kweli's curse- 'n' cliché-free rhyme-ripping proves he needs no help on the microphone. He outshines his celebrated guests, including labelmate Grae, KRS-One, Norah Jones (!), Sonia Sanchez, UGK's Pimp C and Bun B, Musiq Soulchild and Raheem DeVaughn.- NOW Magazine
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Throw in some elegant, economical strings arranged by Owen Pallett and touches of harmonica, vibraphone and sax and you’ve got the best 32 minutes of music you’ll hear anytime soon.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 3, 2014
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 18, 2012
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You can hear allusions Dylan has made to some of these lyrics in his own work over the last few decades, which makes the collection all the more revelatory. And he sings as gorgeously and clearly as he possibly can, as if it’s more important to him than ever that we feel his love.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 28, 2017
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Piano, reverb and guitar fuzz make it Del Rey’s dreamiest and most cohesive album since 2015’s Honeymoon and her most rock-inspired since 2014’s Ultraviolence. The National Anthem singer adds new shade to her ongoing California period, re-evaluating the narrative of life in the United States that she’s built her brand on.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 30, 2019
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It's full of breathtakingly beautiful harmonies and spiralling narrative lyrics that balance complex emotional subject matter with pitch-perfect delivery and hummable melodies- NOW Magazine
- Posted Apr 19, 2012
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- NOW Magazine
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Wilco's ace eighth album, the first released on their own label, dBpm, is a real kick in the pants.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 29, 2011
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 6, 2015
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You can spend hours dismantling Sunbather and cooking up a neat sub-sub-genre for it (post-black-metal-gaze-death-dreamcore-whatever). Or you can just call it one of the year’s best records.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jun 13, 2013
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 29, 2011
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This is the album I've been waiting nearly 10 years for them to make. Better late than never.- NOW Magazine
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Of course, being an audio document, you miss out on the entertaining high-handed flourishes of González at the piano and Bárbarito Torres showboating by playing the laúd behind his back, but it’s still a stellar document of a special performance, the likes of which we’ll never encounter again.- NOW Magazine
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Big Boi's lyrically on point, too, balancing cavalier wit and grown-man profundity that puts this album among Outkast's best. Your move, 3000.- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 4, 2015
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The much richer sound on these formats spins songs recorded as many as 40-plus years ago eerily into the moment. It’s as if you’re listening at the exact instant of recording, making the music as personal as a direct memory.- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 8, 2011
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As with his last couple of releases in the American series, his voice no longer commands attention with booming authority, but there's something about that gasping frailty that makes this proud final bow even more endearing.- NOW Magazine
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The songcraft is high, balancing repetitive groove with dynamic surprises. There's so much variety here, from icy Joy Divisionesque excursions (Silhouettes) to Guided by Voices-through-an-echo-chamber mood (Continental Shelf) to melodic hooks (Bunker Buster) to howling post-punk fury (Death). It lends huge excitement to the project.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 14, 2015
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Mix this lovable simplicity with brilliant guest turns by Cam’ron, Lil Wayne and Rick Ross, amazing production by the Runners and Bangladesh, and Gucci’s exhilarating turns of phrase, blunt humour and excess charisma and you’ve got rap’s album of the year.- NOW Magazine
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While there's still mystery and misdirection on his new album, Poison Season is nakedly ambitious and utterly satisfying.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 26, 2015
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Though the songs here are so much crisper and more exciting, they don't sacrifice the easygoing looseness of Apostle's Folkloric Feel debut.- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
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It’s a bummer that Slayer’s November 13 Air Canada Centre show, and their entire tour, has been postponed due to lead singer/bassist Tom Araya’s back problems, but we can console ourselves with their excellent new album, which finds the dark-minded, serial-killer-obsessed California thrashers keeping all things in balance.- NOW Magazine
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Murphy is still a brat, but this is a more emotionally mature and personal album than most of us thought him capable of.- NOW Magazine
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A chameleon with an endless stream of alter egos and the vocal chops to pull them all off.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 18, 2014
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At 18 tracks, Honest doesn’t feel bloated. Future takes his time on slow, sensitive jams.... But for every tender ballad, there’s a classic Future banger in which he yelps the hook over and over, lest you forget it, on top of harsh beats.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Apr 24, 2014
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Beyond the amber waves of grain, Purple Mountains offer fans a feast of food for thought.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 31, 2019
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Remy is at her most confident as a writer and singer on Poem, and, by working with others, she’s created the fullest realization of U.S. Girls yet.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 27, 2018
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he 10 unconventionally structured songs are less shaky-tent-in-a-snowstorm and more ambitious-skyscraper-blasting-into-the sky.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jun 24, 2011
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Countless rappers claim to have transcended the game. Kendrick Lamar actually does. There’s the sense his ambitions on DAMN. are even larger, reaching toward something more universal, fateful even spiritual in its reach to find the link tying all contradictions together.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Apr 17, 2017
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He celebrates his contradictions with such musical flair, it's a thrilling listen from beginning to end.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Dec 8, 2010
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I remember being disappointed after subsequently discovering Bleach, the band’s debut. It didn’t have Nevermind’s hooks, precise quiet/loud dynamics or Butch Vig’s glossy production. Years later, it’s those attributes that make Bleach so endearing.- NOW Magazine
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It all makes Glass Swords a vivid, liberating experience (and, as a by-product, makes the canned wobble of dubstep seem oppressive).- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 11, 2011
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The choruses are stronger, the harmonies, guitar and banjo lines as tasteful as ever, and the brittle edge that crept into 2003's Soul Journey is nowhere to be found.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 14, 2011
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It's a mind-bogglingly superb testament to an artist at peak power.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Dec 16, 2015
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Think of it as avant-garde composer John Cage trying his hand at disco and getting it right.- NOW Magazine
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Even when West’s going in uncomfortable directions, his music feels alive.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 16, 2016
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It's eminently clear these producers know exactly when to assert themselves and when to stay out of the soul legend's way to achieve the most captivating results possible.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jun 14, 2012
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It's true that we've come to expect a certain level of genius from this band, but when they actually exceed expectations, as they do here, it's a clear sign that Radiohead will continue to reinvent themselves and drop more jaws along the way.- NOW Magazine
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Once again, he brilliantly distills years spent studying the arrangements and analog recording techniques of that music into a personal style that carves out its own space between rhythm and melody.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Dec 16, 2014
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- NOW Magazine
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His arrangement choices are flawless. While guitar stays front and centre, piano, strings, group vocals and slide guitar make fleeting, effective appearances.- NOW Magazine
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With a band made up of old friends, Love has made a seemingly effortless record that reveals more with every listen.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Apr 5, 2012
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It's a near-constant barrage of fist-pumpers built to fight back the sunrise, from the opening pummel of Throwaways to the Replacements-indebted pop power of closer Dirty Lights.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 29, 2015
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The main attraction is still Baird's and Weeks's haunting voices, which turn a risky experiment into a genre-defining classic.- NOW Magazine
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Her sad-girl persona, thrust upon her unwittingly by music media, transforms into its most dramatic form. It’s a brazen sadness echoed through crashing symbols and spacious synths. The songs are devastating, but also nourishing: it’s a whole new version of Olsen.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 4, 2019
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Although the presentation has changed, the raw emotional power at the heart of Bon Iver is intact.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 5, 2016
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 30, 2012
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- NOW Magazine
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The five-piece Montreal/Toronto noise-pop band keep things compositionally complex throughout, and each song rolls seamlessly into the next.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 29, 2013
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Her great success is making these protest songs personal, and she does it in a most profoundly moving way.- NOW Magazine
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Lamar sounds simultaneously like a man firing on all cylinders and struggling to keep it together.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 18, 2015
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- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 21, 2013
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Lamar's invincible on good kid, and reveals just how deft his hand is.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 25, 2012
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Goon is an indisputable triumph and a staggering opening statement from pop music's newest Piano Man.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 18, 2015
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Hopefully there’s still enough room on people’s psych plates for Odd Blood, a masterful follow-up that deserves to get into your ears.- NOW Magazine
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Her music is generous in its illumination of depth. There’s a sense of solace on the record. Everything before was a hard reckoning, and she knows trouble is never far off, but she’s breezy here. Comfortable, even.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 17, 2019
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Isis’s four previous full-lengths have clear story arcs, but Wavering Radiant’s themes are open to interpretation, giving it added appeal. Close to perfect.- NOW Magazine
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It’s a rare and amazing thing when an indie musician finds ways to keep chugging along on her own steam for years and then releases an album that brings together in the most powerful way everything she’s learned. Moncton singer/songwriter Julie Doiron has accomplished this with her eighth album.- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 13, 2012
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On 2014’s Too Bright, Hadreas expressed liberationist sentiments, played with gender and made his queerness confrontational. This time, those themes are felt more heavily in the way he channels familiar riffs, structures and themes into something so singular, unsettling and beautiful.- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 10, 2017
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Fucked Up's grand ambition may one day be their downfall, but right now it has produced an intricate, rewarding beast of an album, their magnum opus.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jun 6, 2011
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 28, 2014
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It's common for heavily hyped albums to fall flat, but Arcade Fire's long-anticipated third LP hits with the satisfied thud of met potential.- NOW Magazine
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What’s most impressive about Attack & Release is how they’ve raised their vocal and compositional game in accord with the sonic enhancements, bringing an unexpected poignancy to their earthy funkiness. Every track is a stunner.- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
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- NOW Magazine
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She adds magic to the mundane, cracking it open to reveal multifaceted nuances: longing, pleasure, resentment, jealousy and also self-love.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 5, 2019
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While Bejar's arrangement decisions challenge popular notions of what delineates good and bad music, shaking off preconceptions in order to immerse yourself in Kaputt's nighttime world is worth the effort.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 20, 2011
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On this trippier, more scattered collection, it emerges in the looming calm, the open moments that peek through pneumatic melodies, beatific, druggy vocals and that throbbing, omnipresent kick.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 11, 2012
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- NOW Magazine
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Gorgeous fuzz guitar leads and glam rock glitter dominate, offset by soft layered harmonies and dreamy textures.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 20, 2011
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Both emcees are incredibly versatile, switching up speed, style and tone, playing off each other one minute, one-upping each other the next.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 6, 2014
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Andy Shauf’s new songs are fictional but feel oh so real, especially if you live in Toronto and even more especially if you live in Parkdale and frequent Skyline, the diner where most of the Toronto-based musician’s new album takes place. ... There are new melodic and rhythmic risks taken.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 24, 2020
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 10, 2012
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The real shift is in their attitude, which allows them to embrace earnestness and write some straightforward love songs. It’s a strategy that could have backfired, but instead it has inspired their strongest and most consistent album so far.- NOW Magazine
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Whether howling eerily over a low, rhythmic pulse or riding a huge riff, Calvi's sensuous presence brings much-needed sexual heat to today's tepid rock 'n' roll landscape.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 24, 2011
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 22, 2014
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- NOW Magazine
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His clever quips, wonky wordplay, raunchy voice and oddball timing combine into something beyond reproduction by anybody, not that any other MC is daring enough to try doing this type of grimy, soulful crunk-hop- NOW Magazine
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Not surprising, then, that his newest leap into club-inspired techno and house feels just as substantial and weighty as his previous forays into experimental pop.- NOW Magazine
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With this single self-produced masterstroke, Alela Diane has effectively shaken off all the ill-fitting labels of “new weird America” and “freak folk” and given notice that a warmly expressive and unique voice has arrived with stories to tell.- NOW Magazine
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To this day, Dylan regards the studio as an artifact-making machine and not a magical chamber freezing definitive versions of his songs. The Bootleg Series has bolstered this opinion before but never presented his creative process so nakedly. For any music fan, this is pure treasure.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 4, 2015
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Fallen Angels is a hazy, laid-back history lesson with as many enigmatic twists and turns as a classic double-cross caper. It subverts archetypes of romance, heroism and interpersonal connection to reveal something more sinister about human intent, all packaged in beautiful musicianship of the highest order.- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 19, 2016
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The revelatory stuff is contextual.... One of the greatest rock records ever.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 8, 2015
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They're the kinds of songs that make you want to run into the street and scream to the universe that life is beautiful and magical, which is a pretty nice feeling as long as you can stop worrying about whether people think you're crazy.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 16, 2011
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Together is the flawless execution of can't-shake-loose melodies, genius arrangements (oh, those group harmonies!) and production that leaves you energized.- NOW Magazine
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While sometimes dreamy and ethereal, South are able to bridge quieter moments with danceable, gloomy pop – simply speaking, a great achievement.- NOW Magazine
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