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Jul 29, 2013BE feels familiar--the group is stuck in the back-half of the '60s, naturally loving the post-Pepper pomp of the Beatles but happy to crib from the Zombies ("Second Bite of the Apple" opens with a riff adapted from "Time of the Season") or any other number of half-remembered, half-forgotten psychedelic oldies--but isn't musty, thanks in part to Sitek's colorful, layered production.
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Jul 29, 2013Shades of light and dark ripple throughout and keep the listener guessing.
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Jul 29, 2013The vocals, the terrible rhymes... it's business as usual then for Liam; it's just scrubbed up a bit.
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Jul 29, 2013What’s not so easy however is appraising something so overwhelmingly awful and so lacking in merit as BE without sounding like one of the smug, condescending middle class intelligentsia.
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Jul 29, 2013As you can imagine, BE doesn't tread any new ground sonically, but for fans of the group, and likely Beady Eye themselves, it's a welcome distraction as we wait patiently for an Oasis reunion.
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MojoJul 29, 2013When it works, it's genuinely exciting, but too often the brave retro-futuristic collision is neither fish nor fowl. [Jul 2013, p.82]
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Jul 29, 2013Although the musical advance Beady Eye have made in BE does not extend to the clumsy lyrics, Liam shows he is not just a balls-out bawler and the band sound sharp.
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Jul 29, 2013BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.
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Jul 29, 2013The album definitely grows on repeat listen.
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Jul 29, 2013[The] familiarity brings you to the cereal, the soap and the market, and some people will be drawn to Be, okay with seeing the imitation. The rest are better holding off for Oasis’ inevitable reformation.
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Jul 29, 2013If Liam seems hamstrung as a rocker on BE, at least he’s showing more promise as a balladeer.
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Jul 29, 2013BE starts with a bang but ends with a whimper.
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Q MagazineAug 8, 2013Some of the more straightforward rockers show signs of fresh thinking. [Jul 2013, p.97]
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Jul 29, 2013The two biggest problems with BE are thus; the energy that made their first LP a surprisingly decent effort has been removed completely, and Liam’s lyrics have plumbed to new, previously unassailable depths of self-parody.
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Jul 29, 2013What lets it down is that it is unutterably, irrevocably and unswervingly dull. Dull, dull, dull. As boring as the hum of a fridge.
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Jul 29, 2013In come motorik krautrock/Velvet Underground rhythms, a brass band, disoriented guitars and an eerie narrative on man's capacity for destruction featuring the words of a murdered French Revolutionary.
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Jul 29, 2013Though marginally better than its predecessor, BE can in no sense be considered a progression.
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Jul 29, 2013It's the sound of a deeply dim man backed by competent-but-conventional musicians.
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Jul 29, 2013The fact that BE is patchy, and solid rather than surprising in its best spots, you have to put down to a failure of nerve or drive. It's not Different Gear, Still Shit, but it is nowhere near as exciting as it might have been.
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UncutJul 29, 2013It's the album's deft balance between Sitek's freewheeling and darkly ambient aesthetic and the familiar sub-Beatles melodies that make BE a bold leap forward in the mould of Paul Weller's recent psych-inspired reinventions. [Jul 2013, p.71]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 32 out of 49
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Mixed: 3 out of 49
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Negative: 14 out of 49
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Aug 7, 2013
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Aug 7, 2013
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Jan 22, 2016