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Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is the 2005 American indie rock equivalent of the kind of records the Kinks were making in the Village Green era: parochial, intimate, painfully literate, and pretty close to brilliant.
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While the best tracks are the most uneasy and strung-out - like when bearing the deranged, astral colors of the Of Montreal kin, “Marry Me” or relishing the fabulous debauchery of the Pixieish devil’s waltz, “My Wicked Wicked Ways” - it can never be denied how honestly happy Lopez sounds on Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells.
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Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is a near perfect collection of four-minute songs that recall a more ragged XTC, the skewed pop/rock style of The Kinks, and The White Album-era Beatles.
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Lopez sounds like the long lost bastard son of Guided by Voices' Bob Pollard; his songwriting showcases this kind of semi-illuminant pop that's infused with sugar-coated placidity.
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Sounds a lot like a stately, plump version of The Rock*A*Teens.
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Knitting Needles and Bicycle Bells is the sort of album you put on when you're in the mood for a particular sound -- and the sound in question is echoing and catchy, yet depressive.
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Blender[Lopez's] wry lyrics and melodic flights lend the disc unexpectedly sharp, stirring edges. [Nov 2005, p.141]
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Poppy and breezy to the point of being nauseating.
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It sounds like good musicians doing a rush job, kind of like Blood on the Tracks without the spellbinding genius.
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It can grate at times and it's way too ordinary an album for that to be a sign of substance or complexity.
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Where the Rock*A*Teens played an artful, echo-laden take on rockabilly, Tenement Halls takes traditional pop and plays it through a murky wall of sound.
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Under The RadarWhile this music may get heads bobbing live, it comes off flat on disc. [#11, p.116]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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Mixed: 0 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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ReggieDSep 18, 2005