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- Summary: The third album for the New York quintet was produced with Alex Newport.
- Record Label: Kemado
- Genre(s): Indie, Rock
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 10
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Mixed: 3 out of 10
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Negative: 0 out of 10
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UncutThe hipster-redneck rhetoric could grate, but O'Death are too good to be dismised as a novelty act. [Dec 2008, p.105]
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When it comes to production values, Broken Hymns is a marked improvement from 2005’s self-financed "Head Home." Still, songs kinda meant to evoke the 1930s aren’t necessarily better or worse off with snazzier studio treatment.
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Everything else on the album acquits itself with varying degrees of resonance.
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Mixing the lawlessness of Hank Williams with the Gypsy fervor of Gogol Bordello, the band's second album is a scrappy, vaguely deranged, country-punk mélange that goes down like an impeccably mixed mint julep: sweet until it burns.
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The playing is tighter and more polished, but they haven't lost any of their manic energy, and in fact this outing is, if anything, even more energetic than "Head Home."
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Except for a few slow numbers, which drag as the band overestimates the charm of their shtick, Broken Hymns works consistently, distracting from the staleness of its themes by burning them from the ground up.
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The disc infuses folk with frenetic intensity, but it's all so over the top that it's hard to take it as anything more than a distraction, like an annoying buzz or a particularly scratchy pair of wool socks.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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Mixed: 0 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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RaquelA.Nov 23, 2008
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FrancisTOct 31, 2008Helps to be in the mindspace of one of O'death's shows to listen to the album, which can be a strange place to be anyway.
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