Outside Closer

Beautifully crafted, complex music which intrigues and begs for another listen.

Don’t be put off by the glossy patina; there’s a lot to hear on this record, as repeated listening makes plain.

The distorted pop ambience of Outside Closer could very well make these Brits the Notwist of 2005. [Mar 2005, p.118]

It's a sound that doesn't loudly proclaim itself, but nevertheless insinuates its way in, until it feels quietly indispensable.

What's remarkable is that instead of sounding autumnal and frigid, the bulk of this album has a warmth, an emotional weight, and a sense of underlying motion that competes damn well against the occasional fireworks. Some of these pleasures may be subtle or take time to grasp, but the sinking-in is gorgeous and worth the wait.

Their most realized album yet. [#15, p.101]

Outside Closer seems to have mined an infinitesimal point on the musical map, something near the intersection of RJD2, Sigur Rós and Iron & Wine. It’s the detail and obsession with which Hood has excavated this minute point that makes the album so warmly, hopelessly riveting.

It's a beautiful restatement of the group's strengths--and a consolidation of the gains made on Cold House.

The songs are wearier than ever and full of life at the same time, with each element seeming to fall into place by sheer luck.

Although Outside, Closer dwells in cheerless minimalism it is a joy to listen to.

They've created a world of tender reflection encompassing engaging melodic cycles, pastoral textures, glitchy interjections, acoustic decoration, melancholic strings, loose, jazz tinged drums, lonely horns, yearning guitar laments and delicate vocals: All melded into ebbs and flows that form a coherent universe through songs which all have their own defining characteristics.

A beautiful album of white noise married with catchy shoegaze harmonies. It's like Four Tet mixed with Radiohead. [#8, p.106]

If their last album seemed like a drastic change to their longtime fans, then Outside Closer will seem like more of a logical succession of sound.

There's a slow-burning moodiness... together with a new directness. [Mar 2005, p.101]

The warm strumming and sparse beats make for an aching melancholy that stirs memories of Radiohead.

Outside Closer weaves an oddly distinctive set of roundelays between the Air-like poppiness and cheery melancholia of the negatives and the Massive Attack jams with The Clash in Reykjavik melancholia of winter 72, concluding with two of the most depressing songs I’ve ever heard.

Hood’s particular brand of indie rock is easily recognizable and refreshingly unique, and despite a few faults along the way, Outside Closer is an excellent album, if not totally fulfilling of its promise.

It demands the right frame of mind, temperament and that ideal rainy-day traveling environment, in which nothing works out. When you're in the middle of such a moment, Hood's there to provide the soundtrack for your emotional nosedive.

A modish conflation of acoustic guitars, violins, subtle electronics and artfully detached vocals, located somewhere near Amnesiac-era Radiohead. [Feb 2005, p.104]

At first, The Negatives and Any Hopeful Thoughts Arrive feel like frustrating attempts at complicated chill-out, but as the songs continue to float fitfully by, listening to Hood artfully juggle paranoia and optimism becomes captivating.

Outside Closer will have quite a significant impact on 2005, but it's a rather wintry and solemn way to begin the new year.

Outside Closer is maddeningly indirect, and the diminishing returns of its final minutes might make you wonder why you invested the time in the first place. But honestly, how many albums can claim to have so palpable an effect?

Surging volume is still far outweighed by wispy melancholy, but the contrast is rewarding. [Mar 2005, p.104]

For the most part, Outside Closer fails to separate itself from the pack of glitch-rock albums it now must share the market with.

"The Lost You" is a breathless, if unfortunate, peak. What follows are four miserable, mostly tuneless dirges that bring a slow death to [the] album. [#67, p.97]