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Monarch Season Image
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The sixth full-length release for the Canadian singer-songwriter was produced with Jeff McMurrich.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 6
  2. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. Nov 5, 2020
    80
    Castle is the lone musician on Monarch Season, playing guitar, piano and harmonica, and the songs thrive in this quiet.
  2. Nov 10, 2020
    80
    The music is simple, but not easy, adorned with intricate picking that cascades over itself like a waterfall. The lyrics feel like really good haiku, pithy, made of small words, but evoking wonderfully precise natural images. It’s a good album for being alone somewhere calm and beautiful, not engaged with the world but not cut off either and enjoying the quiet.
  3. Nov 5, 2020
    80
    The songs seem part of a single entity, each piece tied to the others through their shared, peaceful quality. Castle and her co-producer Jeff McMurrich keep recording for several seconds after a song is over, capturing the serenity of silence in addition to ambient sounds like the lapping of waves in the nearby lake.
  4. Uncut
    Nov 5, 2020
    80
    Through its grooves she invites the listener inside her world without the glow of a screen, a much needed respite from Zoom. [Dec 2020, p.27]
  5. Nov 5, 2020
    75
    The thrill of Monarch Season is in how she collapses these roles, offering her music as something both thoughtful and unfinished. The result is an inventive and subtly visceral record.
  6. Mojo
    Nov 18, 2020
    60
    The overall effect is usually on the right side of too much, the listener lifted up by Castle's wings. [Jan 2021, p.87]