• Record Label: Pi
  • Release Date: Jun 24, 2008
Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. Humor, melody, and weirdness rule, and that makes Ceramic Dog lighter than both Ribot’s Los Cubanos Postizos Afro-Cuban band and his aggro-noise outfit Shrek.
  2. Party Intellectuals is easily Ribot's most fun album to date and one of his best.
  3. More than ever, Ribot's creativity and versatility astound, confound, and frighten.
  4. The musicianship is intense regardless of the subtext, with all three players hurling themselves into their effort. They have an equally convincing way with bruising thrash punk, one-chord-vamp heroics and brooding atmospherics.
  5. No surprise, Ribot's versatility as a guitarist is the main draw here.
  6. While a lot of the tracks on Party Intellectuals delight in ripping conventions apart (or, in the case of those epic tracks, deliriously attempt to discover some new ones), most also allow for some truly batshit crazy guitar solos by Ribot.
  7. At times, Party Intellectuals is as close to a straight raw rock sound as Ribot has come, though this record is all about uncorking a heavy dose of his improv/punk/soul/noise/free-jazz vocabulary, with some drone, some Moog, a little Latin, and a little blues tossed in.
  8. Only after the shock of genre and time warping wares off does the album’s real beauty become apparent.
  9. Party Intellectuals contains enough noise and/or dead space to ruin the flow of many an iPod shuffle, but experimental jazz or avant-garde fans should find enough here to sink their teeth into.
  10. In the end, Ribot’s considerable talents are sadly lost among 12 disjointed tracks that range from out-of-place cacophony to irritating cliché.

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