Critic Reviews
"Each of the nine songs here (this album, unlike Why There Are Mountains or Lenses Alien, feels less like a suite and more like a collection of individual songs working together toward a theme) merits extensive and attentive lyrical consideration, though such an analysis deserves a treatment not feasible in a standard-length review."
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"Cymbals Eat Guitars certainly have done right with LOSE; it’s an impeccably beaten, teary-eyed but smiling document to a frighteningly exhilarating time of one’s life and beacon to march onward--momentous to anyone in their 20s, and even us still neurotic old guys."
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"Channeling profound loss, once-buried emotions, and a stronger sense of songwriting, these Staten Islanders have created something cathartic, life-affirming, and important."
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"The band may love the sounds of Built to Spill and Superchunk a little too much, but they’re also far too adventurous to settle for apery, least of all on LOSE. It’s their best work yet."
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"For its themes of loss and longing, its wide-eyed sense of wistfulness, for all of its hopefulness in misfortune, Lose ends up being a win. And a major one at that."
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"This time around, the specifics are there. And though each isolated moment may not be immediately relatable, they create a universal portrait of our struggle with the loss of youth and the arduous task of soldiering forward while a part of us grasps for those milestones of the past."
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Alternative Press
"It all makes for a remarkable, incredibly moving piece of work. [Sep 2014, p.106]"
"At their core, Cymbals Eat Guitars is still the same band as before--just bigger and bolder, more sharpened and focused. And they’re better for it. "
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"This third LP corrals sophomore sprawler Lenses Alien without killing its spirit. [No. 113, p.53]"
"While the album may not fully scale D'Agostino's high bar, in attempting to make that leap Cymbals Eat Guitars have made their best album to date as well as a touching goodbye to a friend."
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"It’s all over the place stylistically, but then no one ever said that feelings had to make sense."
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"Joseph D'Agostino's voice can get a little grating: too often he's hysterically over-emoting. [Oct 2014, p.107]"
"Handspringing between the rowdy folk-punk antics of "XR" and the sweetly sordid "Child Bride," it's a riveting elegy."
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