- Record Label: Source / Astralwerks
- Release Date: Mar 6, 2001
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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MagnetThe guitars are gorgeously recorded, the vocals are gently understated and the occasional keyboards are carefully mixed into the background with a simple, earnest warmth. [#49, p.79]
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Produced by Ken Nelson, who was also responsible for Badly Drawn Boy's Bewilderbeast, Quiet Is the New Loud is equally praiseworthy, as the band conjures up the spirit of Nick Drake with eerie precision.
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There's lashings of charm in the way the songs unfurl, touch upon an array of ethereal womenfolk and end, having gone nowhere much, but prettily.
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They also have a swell way with a tune, constructing deceptively simple melodies that lodge themselves effortlessly into your head. That's no small thing and the "gentleness" and understated quality tends to make the musical achievement seem less than obvious.
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Quiet Is The New Loud captures coffee-shop folk without its twee indulgences.
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Shifting from light and airy to a sort of mild bossa-nova groove on a few tracks, Kings of Convenience throw in just enough variation to keep things interesting, without snapping the listener out of the dreamy daze they've induced.
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It's an album for well-mannered emotional crises in front of log fires, a soundtrack for quivering bottom lips.
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Alternative PressThough this is limp-wristed stuff, it's also undeniably beautiful, often recalling Nick Drake and Belle & Sebastian. [#154, p.82]
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The pair's lack of ambition might eventually grate but listen to this on your own on a rainy Sunday, with the thermostat set on 25 and its hallucinatory qualities might well invade your being.
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The formula of acoustic arpeggios, light drumming, tender pianos, and the occasional subtle horn or string section makes for an album that's as slight and gentle as Saltines and mineral water. The boys never deviate from this, and thus Quiet is the New Loud, inane title and all, never reaches higher than saccharine easy listening.
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There may be some satirical, post-ironic thing going on here, but you'll be too bored to notice or care.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 16
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Mixed: 0 out of 16
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Negative: 3 out of 16
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RussBJun 4, 2006
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EricNov 1, 2001
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KurtS.Oct 26, 2001