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New Universe Image
Metascore
64

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

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  • Summary: This is the second full-length album for the Washington state band.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 6
  2. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. The fluidity of the music allows for interpretive wiggle room. New Universe sounds like a great, sun-slowed summer album, but I can also see it playing into the feel of other seasons, making for a subdued autumn album or a twinkling winter album.
  2. 70
    His second album delivers fleeting moments of bliss, like a beach bum’s opiate dreams.
  3. As it stands right now, though, it's a nice bit of gauzy, gray-hued racket to throw on when you've only got so much attention to give.
  4. The record finds the band operating in a similar space as the War on Drugs or Real Estate: a fuller sound with a little more polish that still feels homegrown. But in this case, the layers of production do more to maintain a distance than swallow you whole.
  5. Under The Radar
    50
    Unfortunately, this deep-sea sequel to 2008's "White Light Strobing" wades in the shallow end. [Summer 2009, p.70]
  6. If one stripped away the halcyon, indistinct haze and the open-road aesthetic it furthers, you’d be left with precious little, save 10 unobtrusive, well-executed sleep aids. New Universe is its archetype--nothing more, nothing less.