- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
For Living Thing, they ditch the comfortable confines of the airy, featherweight pop they perfected on Writer’s Block for more sonically adventurous territory and prove in the process that their prior success was not just a fluke.
-
The album finds Peter, Bjorn and John settling into a comfort zone that, while hardly groundbreaking, makes for intriguing listening.
-
The lyrics are by turns earnest and cheeky, but PB & J are most fun when they're feisty.
-
Living Thing won't double as anyone's dance-party playlist. But it's an uneasy, bracingly honest soundtrack to life after fame.
-
The sound matches lyrics about isolation and despair, achieving a freeze-dried catchiness in the opening songs. But by the end of the album, cleverness gives way to the bleak and the drab.
-
That shtick eventually wears thin on Living Thing, but on the stomping, squiggly 'Nothing to Worry About,' it kills.
-
The Stockholm-based trio has also piped in a good deal of lyrical gravity--another contrast to PB&J's persistently perky first album--and the best tunes have a welcome heft.
-
The vocals come in a robotic monotone on 'I'm Losing My Mind,' and there's not much holding together all the rhythm on the opener, 'The Feeling.' It just shows that finding the right mix between melody and rhythm is a delicate balance, but these dozen tunes strike it more often than not.
-
Living Thing is a quirky, cranky little beast, determined to defy expectations.
-
The album is uneven by previous PB&J standards, but the band earns high marks for proving their hooks can translate into any stylistic language.
-
If Peter Bjorn and John keep putting out albums as challenging, intelligent, and emotional as this, there is no reason for anyone to get off the bandwagon any time soon.
-
Living Thing may grow to become known as Peter Bjorn and John’s pirate album, a rattling, jangly near-hour of music that’s completely in step with itself.
-
From the hipster head-bobber 'Nothing to Worry About' to the melancholy closer 'Last Night,' the trio takes a minimalist approach to creating beats and accompaniments, making its simple voices more affecting and the subtle production all the more charming.
-
Swedes living la vida on curious new outing.
-
Living Thing isn’t easy listening, it functions best on headphones, and it doesn’t contain an obvious single. But music should be challenging.
-
Alternative PressThis is an album of spontaneous originality and should be appreciated as such. [May 2009, p.114]
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 12 out of 18
-
Mixed: 4 out of 18
-
Negative: 2 out of 18
-
GlenMSep 3, 2009
-
Mar 16, 2022
-
DavidE.Feb 2, 2010