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Jul 20, 2020It may not come across as immediately ambitious as her previous work, but there are no tricks or gimmicks that create this intimacy; it’s just clever production and writing that never outstays its welcome.
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Jun 29, 2020Kitchen Sink is an album that slowly charms its way into your conscience, and is all the more pleasing for that.
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Jun 26, 2020Throughout this album, despite its structural flaws, Shah paints several affecting and profound images. Her words are almost always sung in her trademark jazzy, vibrato-heavy style, which adds some dramatic flair to even the more mundane moments, as do tiny instrumental touches.
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Jun 26, 2020This is a set of funny, twisted, sharp-edged vignettes about the choices women face in the gritty, down-to-earth setting of daily working life – feminist pop as kitchen sink drama.
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Jun 26, 2020Both music and subject matter are sometimes claustrophobic, but the whole of Kitchen Sink is infused with a humour and empathy that opens the album out. It might be on point, but it never feels overly worthy; it’s a truthful account told in engrossing style.
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Jun 25, 2020Shah presents as a mystery wrapped in an enigma, when in reality she's just innately talented and resolute in her convictions. Unsurprisingly, the mesmerizing Kitchen Sink distills those two predilections into something that's both compelling and otherworldly.
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Jun 25, 2020[An] excellent record: the guitars throughout the album are aggressive and sharp-edged, the bass is consistently robust and roaring, and rhythms are serpentine and oppressive - barely a moment goes by that you aren’t feeling Shah’s own claustrophobia, the weight of her own aging bearing down on your shoulders.
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Jun 25, 2020‘Kitchen Sink’ is ultimately rooted in the vague flicker of hopefulness and compassion that Shah embodies so often, and so skilfully; though it dispels the myth that it’s possible to be the woman who truly has it all, she embraces choice, rewriting narratives and multitudes instead.
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Jun 25, 2020Both playful and powerful in its delivery, ‘Kitchen Sink’ may be built around the challenges so many of us still face - and are angered by - on a near-daily basis, but it also offers a bit of light and - most importantly - liberating relief.
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Jun 25, 2020She colors her songs with vibrant shades, drawing out tragicomic absurdities with sly panache. The result is direct but disorienting, like a grim domestic scene painted by Matisse.
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MojoJun 24, 2020Shah's voice throughout is fantastic, carrying and castigating her listeners along with her, while her brilliant band nails radio-friendly rock, swirling 4AD-style gothic atmospheres, and perfect post-punk attack. [Jul 2020, p.82]
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UncutJun 24, 2020It's bolshy, uncompromising and demands to be played on repeat. [Aug 2020, p.36]
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Q MagazineJun 24, 2020Direct, alert, questing, it's a record that powerfully refuses to settle down. [Summer 2020, p.107]
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Jun 24, 2020This is Shah finding her rhythm, enjoying herself doing tongue-in-cheek domestic subversion. It's the kind of album she has long wanted to make, when not urged towards a large scale social statement, like on her Mercury-nominated Holiday Destination.
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Jun 24, 2020‘Kitchen Sink’, is once again political, but is about women’s place in the world, the infinite different lives they lead, and the difficulties of being a strong female. While it goes to some dark places, Shah is able to have a lot more fun as she embodies all these different female experiences.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 10
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Mixed: 0 out of 10
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Negative: 1 out of 10
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Jan 2, 2021
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Aug 28, 2020
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Jul 26, 2020Arteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee