For 764 reviews, this publication has graded:
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47% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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50% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.1 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: | The Naked Truth | |
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Lowest review score: | God Says No |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 517 out of 764
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Mixed: 199 out of 764
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Negative: 48 out of 764
764
music
reviews
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- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Like any good corporate-mandated sequel, it reprises the strengths of its original product with as little variation as possible, to predictably diminished returns.- Village Voice
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With Malkmus, a spade is never a spade, and his usual counterinclinations set Trash aquake with tension: pop that's coy but direct but rambling but surreal.- Village Voice
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Jackson's songs don't seem uninflected so much as just plain skimpy, but their word-shy inertia suggests a sly detumescence that only the very successful can imagine, let alone turn to the service of their art.- Village Voice
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The result's a bit grungy, sure--but there's also an undercurrent of dark, sinister country and blues that suggests they're not just rehashing old times.- Village Voice
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Quaristice demands to be heard, but stubbornly refuses to be the soundtrack of your life. That's art, and perhaps it's only pegged as "difficult" because it won't sing along with you; neither will the Chrysler Building, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.- Village Voice
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Earthy rhythms provide both a welcome backbeat and a sense of history.- Village Voice
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The short songs too often find him serving up tasty, melodic morsels, only to snatch them away before you're fully satisfied.- Village Voice
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This whole thing sounds great, though: rue, clenched fists, and closed eyes mixed at an arena pitch.- Village Voice
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Discipline is the most cohesive deep-groove album from La Jackson since "Control."- Village Voice
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New Amerykah seems adherent to the old "cohesive studio album" mold of the soul/neo-soul eras.- Village Voice
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- Village Voice
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Finest is at its finest when the beats ride out wordlessly, and bloodlessly.- Village Voice
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The Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons are still apt, though they're creeping out from under the shadow of 'Happy When It Rains' and heading toward something far scarier, as traces of Throbbing Gristle seem ready to disrupt their noise-pop vigil at any moment.- Village Voice
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Wisely, The Golden Age is less mediated, its variety achieved through smartly arranged curveballs like the Calexican waltz 'I Know That's Not Really You.'- Village Voice
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While he looses some duds ("New Zion," "So Desperate," and "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature" are skippable) and a set of slightly duller lyrics, the conceits of the songs—the central images of good floundering in an evil world, of contented monsters, of the naiveté of the faithful—serve to substantiate the album as a whole more than any one line, verse, or song does.- Village Voice
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While none of Bon Iver's background notes scream "new"--dissolved love affair, check; band breaks up (Vernon's freak-jug outfit, DeYarmond Edison), check--the chilling, rusty grandeur of For Emma will stop you in your snow tracks, however little it snows around here.- Village Voice
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It could have come across as professional formalism enhancing a half-assed satirist's latest free-market nightmare, but Working Man's Café adds lyricism to the reportage and makes itself useful enough.- Village Voice
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They're very much of their time--friendly indie kids from the Go! Team to Hot Hot Heat are cheerily dabbling in dance music nowadays--and much better than most of those peers.- Village Voice
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Shattered, scattered voice and guitar can't help planting some bizarre memory garden of l-u-v.- Village Voice
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Lightspeed Champion sounds like an ambitious fan, eager to stuff his entire record collection into his solo debut, but with the uncluttered grace of a patient melodist, albeit one who can't resist naming a song 'Let the Bitches Die.'- Village Voice
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His optimism is renewable and satisfying, and for it Field Manual is enjoyable overall.- Village Voice
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There's a newfound depth of feeling in their eighth-album expertise that bitters the sweetness of Beach Boys tributes like 'Show Your Hand.'- Village Voice
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Venus on Earth, their third album, contains more English lyrics than their previous two efforts, but it also represents some of the band's most sentimental work.- Village Voice
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Too quick and severe on the brakes, Black Mountain stunt their own grandiosity in the name of dynamics or patience.- Village Voice
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Jukebox's few truly memorable moments--such as the shimmering 'Silver Stallion,' which takes the jaunty country-rock tune popularized by the Highwaymen and turns it into a late-night whisper, à la her version of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'--are dwarfed by the merely adequate ones.- Village Voice
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The best song on the Drive-By Truckers' new 19-track monolith, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, will remind you why you like them; the album's worst song, which is in fact the worst song they've ever done by a substantial margin, will teach you to love them again.- Village Voice
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Together, they craft lilting, light-hearted art-folk that recalls something akin to Joni Mitchell sitting in with '80s British popsters Prefab Sprout at best, or some Renaissance Faire troubadour's best attempt at improv at its most mediocre.- Village Voice
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Bricks is consequently more bracing and rewarding than most young-love-lost albums.- Village Voice
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Growing Pains could use more of this insouciance, or another song that harnessed all her gifts as well as Breakthrough's "Be Without You" did. Confusing confessions with wisdom, Blige would be more fun if she'd shut up for a while and luxuriate.- Village Voice
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A neat trick folded into The Cool is that Lupe proves rap is still creative enough to indulge bugged-out ambitions, and he doesn't just brag about what a smart-ass he is.- Village Voice
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Just when Carnival II begins to feel comfortable in hip hop, Paul Simon hops onto the mournful 'Fast Car' and a massive Bollywood ensemble powers the roiling 'Immigrant.' [Dec 2007, p.108]- Village Voice
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The album might actually play to Ghost's strengths too much; virtually every track is a straight-ahead adrenal banger with a screaming soul sample and a death-obsessed narrative.- Village Voice
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Shelter doesn't settle into one sound--which is fine--but it's never able to harness its manic energy into anything coherent.- Village Voice
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- Village Voice
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As I Am--very much an album about the condition her condition is in, very much an album in the old-fashioned sense, a complete work: one you shouldn't subject to shuffle before you've given Keys's sequencing a chance to work its magic, its rising and falling arcs, its gut-punch-and-goose-bumps denouement.- Village Voice
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Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.- Village Voice
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The slick Shaggy sex formula is intact, plus he steps off the well-worn with booming first single 'Church Heathen,' already scorching JA parties with its keen indictment of religious hypocrisy, and 'All About Love,' featuring his raw, ragged, utterly compelling singing voice. 'Body a Shake' comes harder than before.- Village Voice
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While the percussion-free 'Endorphin' and 'Dog Shelter' paint haunting pictures of isolation and heartache, a warm and generous humanity runs just beneath the surface. It's this quality that lends the propulsive woodblock throb of the closing 'Raver' its muted euphoria.- Village Voice
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Chrome Dreams II, on which various Neils commingle to an extent not heard on record since perhaps 1989's "Freedom," immediately comes off as the 61-year-old artist's freshest effort in years.- Village Voice
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It's the kind of detailed withdrawal that makes for excellent headphone music.- Village Voice
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Overall, the songs are weaker than before--too many feel cheesy, bland, half-baked.- Village Voice
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Though Alison Krauss and Robert Plant make strange bedfellows indeed, the result is an engrossing, powerfully evocative collection.- Village Voice
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Thanks to singer Jim Adkins's bottomless well of high-flying choruses (not to mention the general shittiness of current affairs), the formula still delivers.- Village Voice
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The greatest thrill, however, is that Kenna's square-peg edges still never quite line up with the mainstream hole.- Village Voice
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Some of the sound makes for gorgeous fury.... But a little concision--and a bit of Pete Wentz's tune sense--would've gone a long way.- Village Voice
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Lover's defects stem less from long length than from how densely Krug packs each nervous tic.- Village Voice
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With 10 tracks adding up to a mere 34 minutes, this follow-up is much more wan and insubstantial than its predecessor.- Village Voice
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Mantaray, Siouxsie's blazing solo debut, earns accolades with no trace of fatigue, padding, or confusion, as on-it and of-the-moment as Justin Timberlake.- Village Voice
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Magic, a maddeningly uneven record that often sounds like legends coasting, most apparently on 'Living in the Future' and 'Last to Die.'- Village Voice
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As usual, the excellent mix--opaque but sunlit--helps; as usual, we eagerly await her next album.- Village Voice
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Only a great fool would be satisfied with just a track or two.- Village Voice
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You can't deny the pleasure of finding a ride-or-die chick who's vulnerable, but can still kick your trifling ass.- Village Voice
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Coupled with other woodwinds, these horns sound elegant, almost classical. But too often the lead tenor veers dangerously deep into Grover Washington territory--such meandering (God forgive me if it's Wayne Shorter) damns otherwise lovely arrangements to elevator-music oblivion.- Village Voice
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LaVette sings Scene as if she's been backed into a corner and relishes the sensation.- Village Voice
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Asleep at Heaven's Gate now continues that same kind of expert carnival of noise, even as its songs are longer (six of the 12 creep over five minutes) and flirt with jam-band explorations. Oddly, though, it feels like a step back.- Village Voice
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DITC will still melt your speakers. Jack Endino's clean yet full-tilt production fills out the sound, but it's drummer Des Kensel's ability to push forward and hold back--not simply pound monochromatically from start to finish--that truly creates the thriving, volatile atmosphere here.- Village Voice
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Curtis is stuffed with tightly wound 21st-century pop songwriting, full of that invisible craft and flow that renders a thing eminently listenable even if it's gratuitously raunchy, politically reprehensible, and sexually retrograde.- Village Voice
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Just because there's an onslaught of verbiage and weird noises (like most pop these days) does not a pop album make. It is their most oxymoronic, though.- Village Voice
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Grating bouts of narcissism aside, Graduation contains killer pieces of production: 'Stronger' uses Daft Punk's 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' to practically revive Eurodisco, while 'Champion' snarkily snatches its hook from Steely Dan's 'Kid Charlemagne.'- Village Voice
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So while '5 Times Out of 100' and 'My Best Friend' revive old times, you miss Steve Bay's unhinged vocals and jagged keyboards elsewhere when HHH instead try to compensate with a funky chant- rocker ('Give Up') or a big-drama Raspberries tribute (the title track).- Village Voice
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It's love song 'I Believe,' really sets the group apart from 2007's other big-beat revivalists, draping ex-Simian bandmate Simon Lord's FutureSex'd croon in Italo-disco shimmer. By keeping its heart, the result edges out Justice's more brutal † for most exciting, um, "blog house" debut of the year.- Village Voice
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Opener 'From Nothing to Nowhere' also makes the case that Pinback's ready for some new fans: It's fast and furious, nicely setting a tempo that suggests they're not fucking around while conveying a (much-needed) immediacy through Rob Crow's voice.- Village Voice
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- Village Voice
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You can't decipher most of what he's saying, and sometimes you're better off. And the beats, provided variously by Blockhead, El-P, and Aesop himself, are rarely more than serviceable. Still, when things come together, as on the title track, we're reminded why many consider this guy the reigning champ of indie rap.- Village Voice
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Places Like This ultimately shares qualities with its IM-chat womb: It's entertaining as hell, but eventually you'd rather just minimize the window and get on with your day.- Village Voice
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- Village Voice
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Under the Blacklight is a brief and often bizarre record, jiggling with artificial rhythm and awash in backup singers imported from 1981.- Village Voice
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Ear Drum marks the self-proclaimed BK MC's third full-length feature, and astoundingly, it's a captivating, cocksure rejoinder to everyone who abandoned him.- Village Voice
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They've become lapidary masters. The trouble is, who's listening and learning?- Village Voice
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They've said their piece and torn each other into pieces–we're left to rubberneck at the crack-up.- Village Voice
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Ditherer is a collection of noisy pop songs, but the emphasis is mainly on the noise, muddying up the tunes in a way that's both frustrating and titillating.- Village Voice
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The Stage Names shares the frenzy of pre–"Black Sheep" songs like 'The War Criminal Rises and Speaks,' and if it isn't as monolithic as the album that spurred the band's rise to "Believer"-subscriber prominence, it does contain several fine examples of hyper-articulate hysteria.- Village Voice
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With Forever, Common delivers the expected--political, lover-man, and battle rhymes told with wit and complexity over street-commercial beats--in spades.- Village Voice
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Much of the music bears little resemblance to the down-tuned chug-and-glug found on the band's early records.- Village Voice
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Anti-war, pro-environment, religious ('Chelsea Rodgers' only gives up trim if you're baptized), and funky, Planet Earth is still merely an excuse to tour.- Village Voice
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In playing it straight, however, the Pups emphasize their abilities as skilled synthesists rather than merely falling back on their rep as inspired eccentrics, suggesting a band that, though grounded, has yet to plateau.- Village Voice
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Thanks in part to the presence of Pantera producer Terry Date, this is the Pumpkins' hardest-rocking record ever.- Village Voice
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Somehow the band manages to sound insincere and gorgeous at the same time.- Village Voice
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Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the group's sixth album, boasts an instrument roll call that might look swollen - trumpet, Chamberlin, cello, koto, flamenco guitar - but Spoon wear it well.- Village Voice
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It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.- Village Voice
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With Goodbye, he's finally got the levels just right. By moving even closer to the shoegazer sound, the result sounds less like pilfering and more like reinvention.- Village Voice
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The record smoothly lures and detours familiar, '70s-based rock-blues-country sounds and expectations while highlighting Isbell's character-actor flair.- Village Voice
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T.I. vs. T.I.P. makes for a confusing listen, which is a shame—fans would probably never have questioned who T.I. is until he started questioning himself.- Village Voice
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The lived-in songs and careful presentation of Easy Tiger make for one of the strongest records of his second career as a solo artist.- Village Voice
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Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished, and redundant maybe, but not bad.- Village Voice
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What Desire offers instead is at times cerebral and at times depraved, but invariably provocative.- Village Voice
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The Fragile Army actually has substance—thematically, musically, and lyrically.- Village Voice
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The affecting style that made them the most imaginative revivalists of their generation has been replaced by half-assed and half-hearted prog rock.- Village Voice
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Here and there, Complicated sets up some promising scenarios—worrying about a platonic friend's reaction to a mix tape, or trying to initiate sex for the sake of outdoing a girlfriend's exes—but they never pan out.- Village Voice
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With the band sounding listless and drained of ideas, it starts trying anything.- Village Voice
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Good Girl never settles on a sound, and Rihanna vacillates between aping Gretchen Wilson, Ashanti, Gwen Stefani, and Pink. Nonetheless, she often sounds every bit like the superstar she clearly intends to be.- Village Voice
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Throughout much of Asa Breed, Dear achieves a serendipitous balance between the uplifting and the eerie, the hummable and the hypnotic, the tuneful and the texturally adventurous.- Village Voice
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Wheat's scrappy though sometimes endearing fourth album is clearly a stylistic protest against their only major-label release, 2003's bland, vexed, much-delayed-by-Sony Per Second, Per Second, Per Second . . . Every Second.- Village Voice
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There's nothing wrong with making music for tweens, or lighter-lofting boomers. It's simply a matter of execution, and here these chums are scattered and grasping.- Village Voice
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Nearly embarrassing levels of enthusiasm, sincerity, and energy inform Fort Nightly, the band's surprisingly meaty debut.- Village Voice
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Beneath the haughty schmaltz of his fifth LP—embodying Herb Albert one moment and a particularly peach-scented Little River Band the next—there are only momentary flashes of the high-quality torch songs we fell for so long ago.- Village Voice
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