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Alternative PressA gimmick-free indie-rock record that's both instantly gratifying and that seems destined to join the timeless-pop pantheon. [Dec 2005, p.202]
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There aren't many bands around that manage to create music as good as this out of such familiar and somewhat obvious sources.
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There's no real reason for them to tamper with a fine formula.
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Entertainment WeeklyLanguid indie pop in the Nada Surf vein. [14 Oct 2005, p.155]
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His songs are hardly ever about anything special, with zero narrative twists or day-to-day details. It's almost like he wants to keep his personality hidden, because it would detract from the beauty of the music. In his case, he's probably right.
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Under The RadarWhereas the band's earlier releases took a distinct chamber pop approach, the songs on Several Arrows Later have a more direct pop feel. [#11, p.107]
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Pond's songs are the alt-rock equivalent of what used to be called New Yorker short stories: subtly realized domestic epiphanies often involving tame nature imagery.
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At times perplexingly distant.
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UrbA lush, relaxing listen. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.103]
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Paste MagazineAnother nice-enough album of sweetly sighing chamber pop that marks yet another incremental step forward. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.109]
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Perhaps this slightly bland direction is one that Matt Pond PA was always headed making this record a totally expected arrival point. But somehow their earlier brand of chamber pop, full of lush strings, and Pond's cloying but touching lyrics seemed to promise something a little more than the pedestrian virtues of Several Arrows Later.
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So maybe Pond really is just another ordinary-guy exemplar of the ongoing post-Coldplay adult contemporarization of indie, as his ordinary arrangements and ordinarier songs would attest.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 11
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Mixed: 1 out of 11
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Negative: 0 out of 11
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ChadSFeb 21, 2006
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mattaDec 28, 2005
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BaileyDec 18, 2005