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Oct 16, 2013Fanfare is the sort of album Jonathan Wilson was bound to make, immaculately crafted and perfectly defined.
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Dec 4, 2013While his distinctive voice and keening melodies are as enchanting as ever, Wilson has added a cinematic heft that neatly avoids being saccharine.
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Nov 25, 2013It is that expanded awareness of what is possible within his derivative style that makes Fanfare a fascinating album, and a significant step forward.
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Oct 21, 2013Happily, the North Carolina’s modern hippie’s second album is too ambitious, too fluently fluently surprising and too lovely to appeal to 1970s retro-heads alone.
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Oct 16, 2013Fanfare takes several plays to fully reveal its charms, but persistence is more than worthwhile.
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Oct 16, 2013Fanfare offers a classy rumination on modern values--albeit something of a conundrum, in being perhaps the most sophisticated celebration of simplicity ever recorded.
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UncutOct 16, 2013Fanfare rummages through the past in a way that will provide aural comfort food for many Uncut readers and writers but Wilson has found a way of personalising and transforming these fragments into a very contemporary music. [Nov 2013, p.61]
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Oct 16, 2013Fanfare travels easily between intimacy and more psychedelic-influenced euphoria because Wilson's songwriting remains his ace in the hole. For all its laid-back deference to his production, it's tight, clever, and artfully constructed.
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Oct 16, 2013Fanfare deserves a round of applause for taking a fearsomely retro concept (album as a mega-budget, widescreen statement) and, rather than sinking waist-deep into pointless pastiche or a rehash of vintage mistakes, ending up with a piece of work that would have been remarkable had it been released during the era it emulates, and which sounds remarkably ‘now’ today.
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Q MagazineNov 25, 2013The follow-up isn't quite so startling [as his debut] and the horrible guitar indulgence of Dear Friend is his first major misstep, but assisted by Jackson Browne, David Crosby, assorted Heartbreakers, Roy Harper and Wilco's Patrick Sansome he's evolved. [Dec 2013, p.117]
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MojoOct 16, 2013What it all means--if anything--is hard to take in, but the journey to finding out is utterly epic. [Nov 2013, p.85]