Metascore
77

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
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  1. Jan 26, 2021
    68
    There is a good album here. The band’s more characteristically brief songs are flawless, but there’s a lesson in this album for punk bands who may want to explore pop: It ain’t as easy as a great hook.
  2. Jan 26, 2021
    70
    Palberta, the band, and Palberta5000 come off like the best of tomatillo salsas: fresh, zesty, and steadfastly green. A concoction that never gets old.
  3. Jan 25, 2021
    81
    Palberta5000 is a fragmented noise punk rock record that hypnotized itself into believing its pop music meant to be sung to the masses, and performed with the same kind of bluster. And really, it’s hard to imagine anything more awesome than that.
  4. Jan 25, 2021
    60
    The scrappy underdog bite of, say, their quarter-arsed, one-minute cover of the Bee Gees’ unimprovable Stayin’ Alive is swapped for a swathe of toothless tunes neither cool nor commercial enough to satisfy hardcore fans or find an entirely new audience. The band’s mayfly magic endures, though, particularly on The Way That You Do’s ragged clarity, the hypnotically repetitive Big Bad Want or live favourite Corner Store.
  5. Jan 22, 2021
    75
    On Palberta5000, the clarity and force remain, but the musical components are more conventional, and the effect is thrilling.
  6. Jan 22, 2021
    80
    Travelling beyond the accepted norms of the swarm of post punk girl groups operating at the same time, this Technicolor tinged album somehow melds droning krautrock sections and psychedelic experimentalism into its jaunty street hoodlum doo-wop core.
  7. Jan 21, 2021
    70
    Palberta5000 is more mature than anything they've done before but just as playful, and more accessible while impossible to mistake for the work of any other band.
  8. Jan 21, 2021
    80
    It is fractious and difficult and thorny, as always, the rhythms knocked sideways, the parts jutting out at each other in angular, assertive ways. But the singing soothes the rough edges and complicates the punk narrative, weaving a buzzing radiance over minimalist grooves.
  9. 80
    What it undoubtedly is however is a tentative sidestep, keeping one foot firmly in New York post-punk while allowing the other to wander towards sunnier, more refined pastures. An alternative route that, while not always trodden in style, Palberta have nevertheless proven they’re more than adept at taking.
  10. Jan 21, 2021
    80
    “Palberta5000,” the first album it recorded with the producer Matt Labozza, has a newfound lucidity and oomph without sounding over-rehearsed, likely because the band recorded it in just four days and never attempted more than three takes for each song.

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