- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Q MagazineThe noisy blackAcetate is the work of a man who is not going to go quietly. [Nov 2005, p.123]
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UncutIn general, the album's too bare, reserved and repetitive to be easily loved by many. But it is brave, from a man still in motion. [Oct 2005, p.104]
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Although the album doesn't hang together well, the few great songs are dark, rich, and instantly memorable.
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Where Cale flaps up is in not allowing himself enough space for nuance atop his overdriven guitars, forcing the deployment of gaudy keyboard settings to match the guitars’ "intensity" and even fumbling into a bona fide mall-punk chorus in "Perfect."
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Cale faces a problem that neither recent Tom Waits nor Leonard Cohen have overcome: he can't sing anymore.
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Much of the album feels unfocused, as if Cale has become seduced by the smooth trickery of digital production at the expense of cogent songs built on icy melodies, slippery poetics and true invention -- three of Cale's enduring strengths sadly missing through much of the album's fifty-three minutes.
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Cale squanders whatever momentum he accrued on the estimable avant-pop of 2003's HoboSapiens by adorning these new songs with such unflattering, generic alternarock textures that they often render their author unrecognizable at best, and irrelevant at worst.
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UrbA strangely satisfying pop record. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.92]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 4
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Mixed: 0 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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BobdDec 23, 2005
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waltbDec 18, 2005it's not his best, but it's better than HoboSapiens or Walking on Locusts.
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kissjNov 16, 2005some velvet sound