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May 20, 2015Ratchet is one of the most purely pleasurable records I’ve heard so far this year, and one of the strongest debuts in several years.
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May 18, 2015It’s an incredible album strewn with highlights obvious and sneaky, the rare debut that holds up the weight of its backstory, with the added brassiness of assuring us that’s just him on the regular. Now we know.
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Jun 25, 2015Ratchet gambles at every turn and comes up a major player.
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May 19, 2015Ratchet refines the rawness of the EP only slightly, its punky minimalism echoing some of the outsider edginess evinced by early '90s house innovators such as Green Velvet.
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May 18, 2015Ratchet isn’t an unqualified triumph. But the album doesn’t have to be perfect to be a success. Its highs are high enough that its lows can be forgiven, or forgotten entirely.
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May 18, 2015On Ratchet, an honest, earnest pop record, Shamir elaborates on the gutsy melodies of those early demos and singles and makes good on the hype.
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Q MagazineMay 29, 2015Mostly this debut sidesteps the freakish in favour of pop immediacy. [Jul 2015, p.113]
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May 21, 2015He projects a charismatic mix of youthful playfulness, cheeky confidence and naked vulnerability that would seem wasted on fun dance pop except that he does it so perfectly.
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MojoMay 20, 2015[A] dazzling modern dance album. [Jun 2015, p.94]
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May 20, 2015Dark, frenetic, and complicated, Ratchet is so thrilling because of its refusal to settle down.
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May 20, 2015It might have been nice to see a few more songs that had Northtown’s slinky DNA, but Ratchet seems to be charting the birth of the star. His work also feels refreshingly modern.
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May 20, 2015Shamir might not be the most conventional of vocalists, and Ratchet might not be the perfect pop record “On the Regular” hinted it could have been, but this is still one of the most dazzling debuts of 2015.
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May 20, 2015His winking in-jokes and one-liners might have gotten the Internet's attention, but Ratchet wins you over when it reveals that this smart-aleck's got a beating heart too.
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May 19, 2015n album of movement that reaches toward the sublime.... Ratchet meanders a bit near the end, but its haze also mirrors the slow awakening that marks the end of a night spent reaching for dance-floor ecstasy.
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May 19, 2015Evolution will silence all but the omnivores, and Shamir has the right taste buds. But he also has a great voice, a stunning countertenor that some have mistaken for female.
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May 18, 2015Shamir's marriage of club-pop and dance music is striking, if hardly revolutionary on the surface. But the devil-may-care ease with which he plays with his sexuality and dances through the drama pushes the record into the sublime.
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May 18, 2015Ratchet is a fully realized, entertaining portrait of an artist who knows where he's from and where he's going.
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May 18, 2015Ratchet is instantly likeable and oh so infectious. A great pop album through and through, there's enough here to keep you dancing all through the summer.
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May 18, 2015In a year that’s seen the heavyweights of the industry fannying about with abstract release plans and bickering over streaming services, Shamir has swept through and delivered a record that schools every one of them in the art of purest pop.
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May 15, 2015Shamir is unquestionably the star, but the interplay between artist and producer is palpable; it’s a musical match made in heaven (or, perhaps, hell: Sylvester has likened his role to the relationship between the poet Virgil and his protagonist Dante), and the finest moments here have Sylvester providing the trampoline for Shamir to bounce on.
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May 15, 2015This combination of pop and disco makes Ratchet the perfect summer soundtrack.
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Jul 13, 2015Whether these throwaway future-pop numbers have staying power, however, is another matter. The zeitgeist is a fickle beast.
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May 15, 2015Ratchet is an exciting first look at an artist in development.
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May 15, 2015Northtown’s rising star proves his worth on Ratchet through his genre fluidity.
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May 19, 2015He isn't operating in the same romantic vein as, say, Sylvester, one obvious predecessor--just delivering a healthy dose of real talk, set to clean cuts of vintage Chicago house grooves.
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May 18, 2015Bailey’s refusal to be pigeonholed artistically is admirable, but frustrating.
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UncutMay 15, 2015This one needed longer in the incubator. [Jun 2015, p.81]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 43 out of 54
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Mixed: 9 out of 54
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Negative: 2 out of 54
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May 27, 2015
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Apr 10, 2017
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Mar 9, 2016