Is A Woman
by Lambchop
  • Record Label: Merge
  • Release Date: Feb 19, 2002
Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
  1. Uncut
    100
    Another mature masterpiece from America's finest. [Album Of The Month, March 2002, p.94]
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  2. Playlouder
    100
    Minimal and huge at the same time, desperately sad in places, thought-provoking and ethereal in others, this is an incredible milestone of a record.
  3. Ink Blot Magazine
    90
    Every song contains four or five things that will just whip your head around in disbelief.
  5. Nude As The News
    90
    For all its minimalist musical approach and inherent gloominess, Is A Woman over time proves a creative masterstroke.
  6. Dot Music
    80
    'Is A Woman' is a deep, rewarding, frustrating, baffling, engaging experience then, an album that drifts away from you just when you're getting hold of it.
  7. AllMusic
    80
    By focusing less on quotidian (i.e., boring) experiences of the proletariat and more on less-tangible allusions to death, troubled romance, and loneliness, Wagner's music is simply more approachable and meaningful, if still hard to puzzle out in its specific intent.
  8. Magnet
    80
    This soggy, after-hours feel also permeates Is A Woman, although the ensemble sound has been pared to the bone. [#53, p.83]
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  9. The A.V. Club
    80
    As an experiment in consistency, Woman is an unqualified success, but it's hard not to occasionally miss the unpredictability of the past.
  10. Blender
    80
    What Led Zeppelin did for bombast, Lambchop try to do for delicacy. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]
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  11. Alternative Press
    80
    It's clever, literate and pretty, but also boring as hell if you don't flip off the lights, clamp on your headphones and concentrate. [May 2002, p.88]
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  12. PopMatters
    80
    A strange delight of a record.
  13. Neumu.net
    80
    Lounge-rock for world-weary sophisticates.
  14. New Musical Express (NME)
    80
    It's a brave and curious record that, as on 'Bugs', occasionally resembles Willie Nelson fronting Labradford.
  15. The Wire
    80
    A record that urges you to lean closer to the speakers in order to fully hear everything that is being played and sung. [#216, p.63]
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  16. Splendid
    80
    The album sounds full whether you're in the next room or sitting right beside the speakers. Details -- a horn here, a steel guitar there, a lilting piano figure that appears out of the ether -- fill every cranny in a sound that's still as spacious as Giant Sand's Southwestern soundtracks.
  17. Mojo
    70
    These gradual pleasures fly in the face of today's pop/rock hardsell, for sure, but inexorably you are drawn into Kurt's world. [Mar 2002, p.100]
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Awards & Rankings

60
#60 Best Album of 2002

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.4

Generally favorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 9
  3. Negative: 1 out of 9
  1. calimerosmix
    Apr 5, 2005
    9
    one of the greatest music's that they have
  2. MattyM
    Apr 9, 2004
    9
    This is a slow, slow burn - especially if you're coming straight after the relative euphoria of Nixon. But give it a few listens and This is a slow, slow burn - especially if you're coming straight after the relative euphoria of Nixon. But give it a few listens and it'll sneak up and strangle you in it's relaxed, measured splendour. … Full Review »
  3. GavH.
    Oct 17, 2002
    9
    Just kept replaying it, however not as many times as Nixon
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