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Oct 22, 2020Ultimately, the best complement one can pay the band at this point is simply to say that the new album is in fact the perfect primer for newcomers as well as further affirmation for those that have followed them all along. Getting Into Knives makes the point that The Mountain Goats are successfully finding their way to higher heights.
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Oct 26, 2020There’s a rockabilly feel alongside soul and even country, but no one genre is discernible for long. It’s as if The Mountain Goats contain multitudes and so can you.
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Oct 30, 2020The result is the Mountain Goats' best album in years, one that's more accessible than 2017's downtrodden Goths and more varied and energetic than 2019's In League with Dragons.
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Oct 30, 2020Getting into Knives reminds us he's at the peak of his abilities in the art of record-making, and reminds us it's possible for a band to be brilliant without a shred of arrogance.
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MojoOct 28, 2020Savour John Darnielle singing. [Dec 2020, p.86]
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Oct 26, 2020With Getting Into Knives, The Mountain Goats provide us with a smorgasbord of robbed emotions and new, neon-backdropped friends – and we need it more now than ever.
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Oct 23, 2020There’s a lot of good here. The band’s personality has never shown through like this in the studio before.
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Oct 29, 2020For all its craft, Getting Into Knives is too casual of a collection to sit alongside The Mountain Goats’ statement albums. But while these may not be Darnielle’s meatiest songs, the rich instrumentation turns them into one of his most welcoming records.
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Nov 12, 2020The Mountain Goats’ tamer approach, however, isn’t bullet-proof; some tracks simply get lost in the shuffle. The slow, sparse structure of The Last Place I Saw You Alive undercuts its poignant and introspective lyrics. Meanwhile, Pez Dorado, despite its decorative percussion, sounds too similar to the preceding Tidal Wave. Getting Into Knives does pick up by its final third, however, relying on more accessible rock tropes.
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Oct 23, 2020On Getting Into Knives, Darnielle shows that the Mountain Goats’ toolkit is always expanding, and his tools are getting sharper all the same.
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UncutOct 22, 2020Delights and distresses, packed with musical flourishes and finely drawn lyrics. [Nov 2020, p.33]
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Oct 22, 2020Such a wide breath of influences can come across as convoluted in the hands of less-skilled musicians, but Darnielle has always had the right people around him to understand his vision, whether its voluble tracks like "Rat Queen" or the stripped-back shuffle of the title track.
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Nov 12, 2020Although Getting Into Knives will certainly offer some exciting moments for longtime fans, it doesn’t necessarily add much to the overall Mountain Goats canon. It often stays firmly circumscribed in topics and styles the band has explored before and lacks some of the thematic consistency of Darnielle’s best work.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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Nov 25, 2020Wow this album is soooooo good! Absolutely perfect from start to finish and one of John's best imo.
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Oct 27, 2020