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As dazzling as Entanglements can be, its polish and uniqueness makes it more polarizing than anything Parenthetical Girls have done before.
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Its vaguely experimental ambitions and occasionally interesting musical flourishes don’t do much to separate it from the mass of baroque indie already circulating, amassing often unwarranted critical acclaim.
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The record is perhaps a more extreme a transformation than that of Patrick Wolf.
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Parenthetical Girls consists primarily of Zac Pennington's unmistakable vocals, and they are given a musical context that emphasizes their stark beauty on this album. It was well worth the three years of effort on his part.
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Conceptually, Entanglements has been done before, but lyrics are reprised and musical sentences are repeated in such a way that it creates a singularly cohesive, linear narrative piece.
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Zac Pennington sounds a bit pubescent himself as he sputters the record's bizarre, hard-to-follow story, but the impeccable arrangements, wormy melodies, and jarring carnal imagery get the point across.
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Throw Pennington's arch, quivering voice on top and what you have is a theatrical overload, too calculated and exhausting to really impress.
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Pennington’s soaring, Rufus Wainwright-esque croon may be the most distinctive element of the record but also one of its greatest weakness.
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Q MagazineFor album number three he's assembled a trio of multi-instrumentalists and vividly succeeded in realising some of his early "Spectorian" ambitions. [Oct 2008, p.149]
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MojoIt's full-bodied baroque. [Oct 2008, p.109]
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Under The RadarEntanglements is wildly ambitious and refreshingly out-of-step with its indie peers. Unfortunately, such a sustained state of effusive mania makes the album's 32-minute running time feel infinitely longer. [Fall 2008, p.82]
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While certain details are kept shrouded, the acts and emotions are hyper-real, and the story's arc is plenty navigable.