- Record Label: Ghostly Int'l
- Release Date: Aug 18, 2009
- Critic score
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- By date
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This Is for the White in Your Eyes is a come-out-of-the-gate winner.
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Winner of the “Best New Act” award at the Danish Grammys, Choir of Young Believers’ debut is like summer itself--over too soon, but a tremendous joy.
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Makrigiannis’ style makes a strong first impression, as his songs flow naturally from muted sorrow to booming emotion and back. He evokes the calm, the storm, and the aftermath.
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MojoLed by spectral-voiced dreamer Jannis Makrigiannis, they have made a desolately pretty debut, its tangible, space and reverb-worn expansiveness conjuring vast Nordic skies. [Dec 2009, p. 92]
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UncutThe music is accordingly spectral, with sparse piano teasing its way into break-out crescendos of strings, French horns and a children's choir. [Dec 2009, p. 87]
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When he injects melodic sunshine, as on the loping 'Action/Reaction,' For the White in Your Eyes nestles nicely between the Beach Boys and Fleet Foxes. But Makrigiannis mostly stays in stark, downcast mode.
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Under The RadarWatch out he'll make yoyr believe. [Summer 2009, p.60]
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Overall, though, it's too smooth and metropolitan to inspire the same reaction that Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago did last summer.
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It is something of a missing link, and therefore a reminder of the often uncomfortably close proximity, between indie baroque’s earnestness and the pyrotechnic baroque of a lead singer who keeps a “passion coach” in his entourage.
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Sadly, This is for the White in Your Eyes sees a band with great potential whose ambitions too frequently get the best of them.