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Mar 1, 2011Combined, the result is a dynamic, human album, one that's easy to fall in love with. Highly recommended.
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Mar 1, 2011If 1998's Car Wheels on as Gravel Road stands as the high point of Williams' self-involved period, Blessed just as masterfully traces the bursting heart and smoldering soul of her humanity. This is as deep and true as the song form gets.
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Mar 1, 2011Williams lets the songs burn slowly and sensually until there's nothing left but smoke and ash.
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Mar 4, 2011On the new collection Williams is sharp-tongued, wide-eyed and warm-hearted as she blends domestic bliss with her usual propensity toward the dark and mournful.
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Mar 18, 2011Atmospheric. Play loud anyway, so it won't be.
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MojoApr 22, 2011On Blessed she finds the perfect balance between the sweet and the sour. [Apr 2011, p.98]
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Mar 9, 2011She certainly knows how to convey emotion.
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Mar 1, 2011Blessed is Williams' most focused recording since World Without Tears; perhaps since Car Wheels.
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Mar 1, 2011The songs are mostly shaped in her traditional chord-to-chord method, their melodies looping behind the tempo of the guitars and, for once, in a spirit of uplift.
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UncutMar 1, 2011Blessed is a powerful, vivid, highly emotive record. [Mar 2011, p.92]
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Feb 28, 2011Her voice has all its old scrapes and hollows; she'll never come across as too cozy. But her music is newly confident.
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Feb 28, 2011Blessed ultimately remains an optimistic record that juxtaposes her typically heartrending croon.
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Feb 28, 2011Blessed, like Williams' best efforts, finds the blessings within the blues.
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Feb 25, 2011Don Was produced this. He must have loved it as much as the musicians did, and he obviously got it as nothing in the production interferes with the songs.
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Feb 25, 2011Blessed improves upon 2008's lacklustre Little Honey simply because it boasts a better set of songs, most of which are treated to Williams's signature style of soul-tinged country-blues, using organ and pedal-steel guitar to light her sandpaper vocal rasp.
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Mar 1, 2011Produced by Don Was, Blessed doesn't sound fussed-over; it lets the songs, Williams' voice, and bluesy guitar work-provided on some tracks by Elvis Costello-take the lead.
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Mar 1, 2011On her 10th disc, she revives the literary realism that's turned so many of her songs into true-talk crushers.
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Feb 25, 2011Blessed feels more like a country-blues toast to the pissed-off side of interpersonal relations, set to coproducer Don Was' sturdy barroom roots rock. And Williams calls 'em like she feels 'em.
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Mar 17, 2011The controlled recklessness of Little Honey was a long-awaited antidote to Car Wheels' strong medicine, and now Blessed basks in its older sibling's afterglow.
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Feb 25, 2011Blessed, the roots-music veteran's latest feels a little sleepy compared with 2008's hard-rocking Little Honey.
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Mar 4, 2011Williams is more observational than personal throughout Blessed, looking upon her downtrodden characters with sympathy and compassion.
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Feb 28, 2011Blessed isn't a happy record in any conventional sense, but it's informed by deeply felt hope and contentment.
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Mar 16, 2011Ultimately, Blessed has the feel of a transitional album-- from lonely to married, from troubled to contented, from regretful to joyful.
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Mar 14, 2011Blessed certainly isn't a curse, but it doesn't exactly leave you feeling a higher power, either.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 8
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Mixed: 1 out of 8
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Negative: 1 out of 8
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Mar 6, 2011
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Mar 5, 2011
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Mar 2, 2011