Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Sep 25, 2014Too Bright boasts harder-hitting lyrics, more sophisticated arrangements, and his best-fitting production yet. Its musical successes are obvious in their immediacy and variety.
-
Entertainment WeeklySep 29, 2014Even the moments between the standouts float by with a strange beauty. [3 Oct 2014, p.69]
-
Sep 29, 2014It takes him--and the listener--way out of the comfort zone, a shift that suits his tendencies wonderfully.
-
Sep 24, 2014Despite its heightened complexity, Too Bright still fosters an intelligible world where Hadreas can bridge the distance between his vulnerability and self-assuredness.
-
Sep 23, 2014What results is at times noisy, at times beautiful, and always captivating.
-
Sep 29, 2014It's a record full of beauty and heartache, confidence and fear, and these ends pull at each other for one of the most captivating records to come out this year.
-
Sep 25, 2014Glittered with transcendent brilliance, gilded shadows do not hide the empowered dramatic turn of Perfume Genius’s Too Bright.
-
Sep 19, 2014Hadreas finally appears to have found a sound palette as provocative, forward-thinking and confrontational as his vehement, brave lyrical style.
-
Sep 17, 2014Too Bright is a near immaculate work. It’s bold but vulnerable and finds Hadreas taking risks in structure, content and sound.
-
Sep 16, 2014It’s not the easiest of pop albums to listen to but its raw power makes it a dazzling triumph.
-
Sep 16, 2014Too Bright is a strident and bold statement from an artist who has finally undone the knot of his past. It won't be the record which brings him mainstream success but it will be the record that frees him from the pigeonholing of his bruised and broken singer-songwriter image.
-
Sep 23, 2014These songs feel less like songs and more like treasures, ones that fill you with power and wisdom, and as a result, Too Bright seems capable of resonating with, comforting, and moving anyone who's ever felt alienated, discriminated against, or "other-ized," regardless of sexual orientation.
-
Sep 23, 2014While Hadreas’ lyrics made the most powerful moments of Perfume Genius’s 2010 debut Learning and 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It, Too Bright folds its words into startling, varied instrumental textures.
-
MagnetNov 12, 2014Too Bright highlights the moments of buoyancy that dotted his first two outings--both of which sounded nothing if not dour on first listen--and setting the stage for Hadress as one off the most compelling new American songwriters of the last half-decade. [No. 115, p.61]
-
MojoNov 7, 2014It is a deeply odd but consistently compelling work. [Nov 2014, p.98]
-
Oct 30, 2014As with many works that get tagged as major breaks from an artist’s established work, truthfully much of Too Bright still feels very much like the work of the Perfume Genius, and anyone looking for more of what they got from past albums will be very satisfied.
-
Q MagazineOct 3, 2014Too Bright finds him more sparky and more mettled. [Nov 2014, p.116]
-
Oct 1, 2014Few artists in this day in age take self-expression through art to heart like Hadreas does as Perfume Genius, and with the sensitive confidence that radiates from Too Bright, he’s mastered in a way few artists never do.
-
Sep 30, 2014Equally bold, vulnerable, concise, and expansive, Too Bright dazzles.
-
Sep 30, 2014Too Bright creates a captive audience in its effusive refusal to let you look away.
-
Sep 25, 2014As Perfume Genius, American singer/songwriter Mike Hadreas has become synonymous with dark and emotionally heavy piano dirges that are as vulnerable as they are elegant. His third album contains many such songs, but also ratchets up the drama with help from co-producer Adrian Utley of Portishead.
-
Sep 22, 2014The material more than matches the ambition on these 11 bewitching songs.
-
Sep 22, 2014It's a collection of enthralling confessionals where stabs of bleakness mean that heavy bleeding dominates.
-
Sep 22, 2014Perfume Genius has begun to spread his wings, delivering a breakout release that relies on much more than his manic/mopey persona.
-
Sep 18, 2014Not every effect works (the gloom of I’m a Mother is too airless, the electronic pulse of Longpig too enervating), but on the whole, it’s hypnotic.
-
Sep 18, 2014The darkness was always there, in Hadreas, in the songs, but now it’s in the music, Too Bright, to sound ridiculously over the top, has darkness in its soul.
-
Sep 16, 2014None of these songs are particularly complex and they're all the more brilliant for it. [Sep/Oct 2014, p.78]
-
Sep 16, 2014Too Bright is a diverse, multi-faceted and all-absorbing slice of sheer mastery.
-
Nov 26, 2014He lacks the humour, more explicit angst and emotional confidence of John Grant and lacks Garneau's devotion to melodrama and pop. He is hardly Stephin Merritt. He exists independently as a cultural explorer as well as simply a very fine, very sensitive songwriter.
-
Sep 23, 2014His ambitions are even greater on his third album, which demands attention in a way his quietly heartbreaking music hasn't in the past.
-
Sep 22, 2014Nothing here sounds revolutionary or even especially distinctive, but Hadreas has successfully conceived of a new context for his raw lyrical approach, opting for a jagged, complex collection of bedroom pop over another sparsely appointed set of torch songs.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 102 out of 119
-
Mixed: 10 out of 119
-
Negative: 7 out of 119
-
Jan 12, 2015
-
Sep 23, 2014
-
Sep 24, 2014