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- Summary: The Ted Leo-led rock band moves to Matador Records for its sixth album.
- Record Label: Matador
- Genre(s): Rock, Punk
- More Details and Credits »
Top Track
| The Mighty Sparrow | |
|---|---|
| when the cafe doors exploded i reacted too, reacted to you reacted to you cast into the sunny morning i was coming too, but now i'm coming to, but... | See the rest of the song lyrics |
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 17 out of 22
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Mixed: 5 out of 22
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Negative: 0 out of 22
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The Brutalist Bricks sounds nothing like that at all. Ted Leo is still very much in his prime, and Bricks is as relevant (and as great) a record as you'll hear in 2010.
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Alternative PressThe Brutalist Bricks is an experimental and enjoyable pop-punk record. [Apr 2010, p.128]
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Leo was impressive even when he was an unmitigated idealist but now, older and less sure of things, he is even better.
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The Brutalist Bricks, for its moments of torrential fury, sags when Leo occasionally writes outside of an exhausted but all-encompassing formula.
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Despite its obvious ingredients and well-worn criterion, Brutalist Bricks comes off peculiarly fresh. There are simply not a lot of people making the same sort of music Leo is these days; his audacious conviction is so easily appreciable (and hard to recreate) that he's almost immune to diminishing returns.
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Although it may not be a punk album through and through, songs like "The Stick" and "Where Was My Brain?" embody the genre's spirit with pounding drums, frenzied guitars and rushed deliveries (the former cut clocks in at less than two minutes), while "Mourning in America" mixes the genre's chaotic arrangements and political bite with Leo's usual power-pop flare.
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A perfunctory listen yields little that stands out, offering none of the instant classics that the earlier albums earwormed into steady rotation.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1 out of 1
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Mixed: 0 out of 1
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Negative: 0 out of 1
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TomP.Mar 24, 2010
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