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Though Auf Der Maur has run off with their blueprint and built it as seen, there’s raw passion and no little class here; Corgan and Love must be rueing their luck.
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Melissa has delivered a hugely sexual, gleefully psychedelic rock record that’s so full of deliciously melancholic stadium destroyers and beautifully de-tuned melodic bombs that, at the perfectly reasonable age of 32, you get the impression that the really good stuff is only just beginning.
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Alternative PressThe disc's bread and butter is Auf Der Maur's smoking riffs. [Jun 2004, p.106]
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Q MagazineA revelation. [Apr 2004, p.107]
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FilterAuf der Maur builds a strong rhythmic foundation on this record and then proceeds to layer the white powder on top to hook the kids. [#11, p.94]
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Her thin voice is no match for the thick guitars that dominate this metallic pop marathon, but there is a strange, earthy quality that makes songs like "Overpower Thee" and "Skin Receiver" compelling.
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For all its celebrity tricks and years of pipeline evolution, ‘Auf Der Maur’ still has all the hallmarks of the debut record.
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This album doesn't break new ground; in fact, the music is very ordinary, but the mere presence of Auf der Maur and her intoxicating voice makes the record a modest success.
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These are powerful and finely crafted songs, even if the lyrics suggest that, for Melissa, the meaning of life is chained up in some goths-and-dragons dungeon.
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It's not, in the final reckoning, a terribly important and wildly impressive record.
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BlenderBuffeted by big guitars, her thin, untrained voice occasionally sounds listless. [May 2004, p.118]
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Ultimately, it's hard to avoid that Auf Der Maur is living in the past, re-creating 1996 and acting like she's still 24.
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Entertainment WeeklyThe album's monolithic sound... feels dated and drab. [4 June 2004, p.80]
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Auf der Maur plays the kinda late-'90s alt-rock that Veruca Salt's debut (American Thighs, the one with "Seether") hinted at (too bad this isn't the late '90s...).
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Musically, it's simply awesome, sounding not completely unlike early PJ Harvey... It's a shame, then, that the lyrics frequently don't cut it. [Amazon UK]
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If anything, it's nothing: a dark, expensive, teenager programmed, radio-friendly, MTV-destined nothing.
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This record is more riddled with more clichés and pure, retro water-treading embarrassment than anything [Courntey] Love ever conjured up.
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MojoSuffers from a paucity of premium standalone songs.... way too relentlessly generic. [Mar 2004, p.101]
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She never finds a way to distinguish one track from the next, or from the output of just about any '90s alt-rock also-ran.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 17
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Mixed: 1 out of 17
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Negative: 3 out of 17
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Jun 29, 2020
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Apr 19, 2011
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Aug 27, 2010