Lovers

A record that is rich, varied and a little crackers as well, Lovers will certainly stand as one of the best debut albums of the year.

Juicing fragile melodies with weeping George Harrison guitar, frontman Luke Steele is pretty even-keeled for a spaced-out pop maestro. [Nov 2003, p.117]

Eclectic, certainly, but for the most part it works. [#5, p.108]

Without resorting to difficult time signatures or moaning about the desperate pain of it all, [Luke] Steele has found a wonky path away from rock's mor restrictive conventions while still engaging positively with the world. [Aug 2003, p.113]

A kaleidoscopic masterpiece that asserts itself as a spellbinding album. [#23, p.100]

While Luke Steele's influences show through on all of Lovers' tracks, somehow the album avoids sounding totally derivative; instead, it just reveals Steele as a pop chameleon and an expert at pastiche.

The evidence here suggests the Sleepy Jackson could make a great punk album, or a great country album, or a great psychedelic album. Instead, they've simply made a great album, and one of the best debuts of the year.

As eccentric as it is beautiful.

An overpoweringly diverse record. [Aug 2003, p.92]

Steele's self-conscious attempts to create a legend for himself only distract from what is actually a very good album.

So what do you hear when you listen to this record? There's the happy, choral rock of the Polyphonic Spree, the blissed-out psychedelic rock of the Flaming Lips, the sloppy DIY aesthetic of '60s garage heroes the Fugs, as well as the Velvet Underground, Mercury Rev, Gram Parsons, George Harrison, the Stones, Joy Division, the New York Dolls, Fountains of Wayne ... and that's only on the first five songs.

Lovers makes for an enjoyable, if exhausting, listen; at times, it sounds more like a sampler from a promising label than the work of one band.

If his eccentricity was tamed and the pained attempts to hop genres were avoided, Luke Steele could just produce something close to sublime. As it stands, Lovers is a fairly pleasant application of some charming reference points, but please, let's stop pretending that that's good enough.