Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You
by Lightspeed Champion
  • Record Label: Domino
  • Release Date: Feb 16, 2010
User Score
6.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 5
  3. Negative: 1 out of 5

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  1. popolopolous
    Mar 30, 2011
    3
    I came into Life Is Sweet! expecting a lot. I'd seen the video for Marlene: the song was catchy. Lightspeed Champion's previous album to this day remains one of my favourite albums. But I was sorely disappointed.

    Life is Sweet! lacks the thing that made Lavender Bridge great: identity. Lavender Bridge was unique. While it had obvious influences, they all combined to form a greater whole,    I came into Life Is Sweet! expecting a lot. I'd seen the video for Marlene: the song was catchy. Lightspeed Champion's previous album to this day remains one of my favourite albums. But I was sorely disappointed.

    Life is Sweet! lacks the thing that made Lavender Bridge great: identity. Lavender Bridge was unique. While it had obvious influences, they all combined to form a greater whole, and a being that transcended influences to become a beast of its own. This album throws that identity out, in favour of variety as it swings between western to pop-rock to piano-led ballads to small classical-inspired instrumentals, and through this mechnical genre-running removes the raw emotion and humanity that Lavender had in spades.

    But, taken on its own merits, is Life Is Sweet! still a good album? The answer is possibly. While none of the songs are 'bad' per se, instrumentation is occasionally incongruous with the song it's in, repetition is featured highly but of the annoying parts of the songs, and as a complete album it is far too unfocused and dithering. Sweetheart is the best representation of the album as a whole: the song begins with an acoustic guitar, breaking tension with a bass guitar and swelling vocals in the chorus and showing fantastic amounts of potential - then it breaks its mood, momentum and quality as it breaks into a western, nearly hoe-down sounding refrain with Dev whining an annoying melody. Life Is Sweet! definitely had potential, but is overall disappointing - both standing alone, and as the follow-up to Lavender Bridge.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
72

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
  1. Alternative Press
    60
    Lightspeed Champion somehow fail to generate the true emotional sentiment that was the crux of the artists he's drawing from...Hynes has matured, though. [Mar 2010, p.94]
  2. Pitchfork
    67
    Alternately inspired and frustrating, it addresses themes of lost love (and lost chicness) with Queen-size 70s-rock pomp, neoclassical interludes, and one ukulele-based chamber-pop song.
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  3. musicOMH.com
    80
    But what comes through now is the strength of the songwriting, and his willingness to try out new things.
    Read full review
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