Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Jan 23, 2017Easily strong enough to act as an ideal entry point to Chapman's extensive discography, and quite likely the veteran's definitive statement, 50 deserves to reap all possible plaudits.
-
The WireJan 27, 2017At times 50 swerves near to MOR Americana, but Chapman’s guitar playing, the bedding of every track, bristling with thorns, won’t let it. [Jan 2017, p.61]
-
Jan 25, 2017Chapman’s songs range from bleak to wryly humorous, but they’re dark and lonely at the center, and it’s a pleasure to hear him in such good company, for once, and not alone.
-
Jan 18, 2017Chapman may be tying off a loose end by making this record, but he doesn’t sound like he thinks he’s at the end of the road yet.
-
Jan 18, 2017Where his recent albums have leant more towards long-form improvisation, 50 focuses on songs, with the warm drizzle of Chapman’s gnarled Yorkshire burr lending a bluff, worldly-wise character to American tableaux.
-
UncutJan 17, 2017Lush and lively. [Feb 2017, p.29]
-
MojoJan 17, 2017Michael Chapman sounds just fine exactly where he is, deep in the knowledge of what is coming, but finally aware of how far he's come. [Feb 2017, p.88]
-
Jan 17, 2017The real magic on 50 doesn’t come from the coterie of younger tyros, but the great buck himself. The frailty of the 75-year-old’s voice (he’ll be 76 when this album comes out) can render homespun parables as biblical portents, in much the same way that Rick Rubin reinvented Johnny Cash as a latter-day Nostradamus.
-
Jan 17, 2017Even as it draws on new and old songs, 50 presents a startlingly current and nearly apocalyptic vision of America; it’s album full of brimstone and brine, perhaps more perfect for this moment in history than we’d like to admit.
-
Feb 22, 2017Essentially, Chapman is an old-style saloon storyteller whose reflections are enhanced and coloured by his myriad guitar treatments, an old dog not afraid of new tricks.
-
Jan 19, 2017Chapman is an artist who has never had a problem with upending creative expectations, and if 50 isn't the sort of music many of his longtime fans would expect from him, it's also passionate, literate, and the work of an artist who wants to make the most of his late-era career. Not many artists sound this determined and engaged, especially at the age of 75.