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Sep 12, 2016He’s cut a broad range of material to date, everything from Delta blues to free jazz to blazing psychedelia. All that and more surfaces at various points on Eyes On the Lines, ultimately making the album a culmination and a celebration.
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MagnetJun 1, 2016Guitarists Gunn, Jim Elkington and Paul Sukeena channel their prodigious technique to fleeting textures and ingratiating hooks, and the arrangements update the template of 1970-vintage Velvet Underground and Grateful Dead with a half-century of judiciously applied production acumen. [No. 131, p.57]
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The WireJul 18, 2016Extended periods of concentration can create a flow state in which work feels effortless, even meditative, and it's this state that Eyes On The Lines evokes. [Jun 2016, p.50]
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Jun 17, 2016Eyes on the Lines sounds alive: the ivy growing out of that sphere, adding color and oxygen to the weathered, though still captivating, form underneath.
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Jun 8, 2016Gunn excels at unrushed, meditative songwriting, but this album also finds him giving stronger form to his dreamy creations.
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Jun 6, 2016By embracing the expanse, his music has gotten bigger, and more universal.
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Jun 6, 2016Most songs take the form of this kind of zen guidance, but Eyes on the Lines avoids stagnancy in part due to its relative brevity--only 9 tracks--and in part due to Gunn’s combination of flowy melodies and shifting chord progressions, which can trigger a kind of relaxed euphoria.
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Jun 3, 2016Eyes on the Lines is summer’s quintessential pleasure, the unmapped excursion through sunlit spaces, the unhurried but never static interval for reflection, the road trip that goes everywhere and ends up exactly where it started. It’s an album to get lost in, every time you listen to it.
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Jun 3, 2016These songs wander, but they succeed because they enable us to wander, too. They encourage us to get lost.
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Jun 2, 2016As blissed-out a road record as it is, Eyes on the Lines contains some very thoughtful and well-designed songwriting, with lead single "Conditions Wild" being among its best.
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Jun 2, 2016Gunn’s voice is so mellow that the songs’ words fade into the background at times--but then the guitar is the frontman here. This could be your next roadtrip head-nodder.
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Jun 2, 2016Making experimental music is certainly a noble calling. Sneaking the adventurous spirit of improvisation into a relatively conventional song-based record such as Eyes On The Lines, however: that's truly radical.
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Q MagazineMay 26, 2016Eyes On The Lines is the follow-up to his excellent 2014 album Way Out Weather and it finds Gunn rolling down the same never-ending dusty highway. [Jul 2016, p.108]
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MojoMay 26, 2016The main strength of this album is how the guitar playing, which is superb throughout, feels inextricably bound to the structure and shape of the melodies. [Jul 2016, p.95]
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UncutMay 26, 2016It manages to top those two finely crafted albums [2013's Time Off and 2014's Way Out Weather]. It's more streamlined in its playing, more confident in its writing, more determined in its mission. [Jul 2016, p.72]
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May 26, 2016From stunning opener "Ancient Jules" through "Ark," a closer that condenses all the fleeting beauty of southwestern skies into five minutes of billowing folk rock, a feeling of leisurely yet ceaseless locomotion persists. [May - Jun 2016, p.93]
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Jun 1, 2016Like the rest of the LP’s most successful tracks, all of these songs latch their loosey-goosey lyrics to an ironclad repetition, the core guitar line of each tune distinguished by a clarity that turns it into a hook. Because Gunn has a solid foundation, he can wander the earth, air, and ocean freely.
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Jul 6, 2016It’s not always the most memorable listen, though through its free-flowing divagations we finally begin to feel more empathy for an artist who’s too perceptive to hide behind his taut guitar accents.
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Jun 14, 2016The lines referenced in the album’s title are not the kind to restrict or limit. They’re the kind to follow. The lines of an open road, rich with possibilities and rife with unanswered questions. Though whether the road is in this reality or another, remains to be seen.
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Jun 7, 2016Eyes on the Lines is unmistakably a guitarist's album, yet luckily for most, Gunn's song writing is also remarkably accessible. The listener may not find themselves with catchy vocal hooks stuck in their head after a first listen, but they'll definitely be humming riffs and guitar lines for several hours afterward.
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Jun 2, 2016Eyes on the Lines functions as the ideal soundtrack to an afternoon spent getting lost.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 10
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Mixed: 0 out of 10
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Negative: 2 out of 10
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Dec 13, 2019This is an album I keep returning to. Solid songwriting, great guitar playing and all-in-all one of my favourites from the last decade