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The contrast of Moog buzz and the wordsmith's featherlight touch reaches full tilt with 'Hallelujah, Goodnight!' but takes a sharp left with the equally charismatic 'Bat Coma Motown,' where banjo and trumpet hug it out while dancing the Temptation Walk.
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Where the latter two releases felt like "Hail Marys" tossed into the musical ether, Ocean serves as a return to the kind of sharp-tongued, Beatlesque retro-pop that fueled 2005's "Novelist/Walking Without Effort" and the aforementioned "Letdown."
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In this brilliant new time of directional change, the piano-led analogue boy is practically smiling his words out on the Mark Ronson-produced 'Ballad Of Old What's His Name'.
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Swift hasn’t put out a bad record yet, but The Atlantic Ocean is his most solid effort yet, his best attempt at managing the dark-lit record store in his head.
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UncutSwift's stock-in-trade remains droll, gently roistering piano songs, mostly indebted to Harry Nilsson. [May 2009, p.97]
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Under The RadarThe Atlantic Ocean is a sleek, meticulously crafted folk-rock record which mines a similarly vintage Harry Nilsson-charted territory as Wilco traversed on "Sky Blue Sky." [Spring 2009, p.68]
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The sad sacks who populate such bitterly funny songs as 'Already Gone' and 'R.I.P.' linger in the mind long after the toe-tapping grooves have faded.
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If you’re reading this, stick with it. It has some real rewards in the back end--my only hope is that the songs were recorded in chronological order, to suggest that this is the direction Swift will take future albums.
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Swift has figured out how to make pretty music, but he hasn't found anything compelling to say through it.
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Most of the songs are pretty catchy, but never quite work their way into your consciousness.
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Despite sometimes dissolving into monotony, the mood remains light, and Swift's playfulness, evidenced by moments like the falsetto opening of 'Lady Luck,' keeps things in check.
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Q MagazineIf the squelching synths of 'The Original Thought' irritate, the jauntiness elsewhere suggests he's thriving on a lack of commercial pressure. [May 2009, p.119]
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The Atlantic Ocean is impressive, at times even masterful, yet falters in reminding us more of what it lacks than of what it possesses.