The Independent on Sunday (UK)'s Scores
- Music
For 789 reviews, this publication has graded:
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57% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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40% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: | One Day I'm Going To Soar | |
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Lowest review score: | Last Night on Earth |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 495 out of 789
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Mixed: 280 out of 789
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Negative: 14 out of 789
789
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
The most perfect suite of music recorded in my lifetime.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 2, 2011
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- Critic Score
There are four CDs' worth but it's enormously rewarding, like mid-period Miles Davis playing Ligeti.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 9, 2012
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- Critic Score
Interesting to see that a few of the unused songs from the period (1978) push the released material for quality.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 23, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 30, 2012
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- Critic Score
"I wanted", Ocean wrote, "to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions." Mission accomplished, and then some.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 18, 2012
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- Critic Score
This may well be Henriksen’s most approachable album--certainly for people coming to him for the first time--and even the semi-commercial breakthrough he deserves. It is also absolutely sublime.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 12, 2014
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- Critic Score
It starts nervily and there's some creative recycling of motifs, but once he builds up a head of steam the force is truly with him.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 30, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 13, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 24, 2014
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- Critic Score
This is a band for fans of Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker and Nick Cave who wondered where their next great love was coming from...it's already here.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 20, 2012
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- Critic Score
A good “deluxe” remaster job will do at least two things: one, it’ll strip away centuries of digital compression and make the music sound as if you’ve never heard it properly before; two, it’ll include additional material that gives insight into how the finished work was shaped. Moondance delivers on both counts.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Oct 23, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 22, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Oct 24, 2011
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- Critic Score
Simon Green, aka Bonobo, has created a beguiling and compelling narrative.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Dec 10, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 14, 2012
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- Critic Score
Buckinghamshire band SBP return for their third album with a far more complex musical palette.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2012
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- Critic Score
Fans of Springsteen's downer side might flow with the music's riverine vibe.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 21, 2013
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- Critic Score
What comes across most is the sheer unbridled enthusiasm expressed in the complex, racing rhythms, squalling sax solos, twanging electric guitar and crooning vocals.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 6, 2014
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- Critic Score
MBV leaves all other post-rock experimentalists looking like trivial dilettantes. If jet engines could sing, these would be their hymns.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 11, 2013
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- Critic Score
Their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 28, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 20, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 15, 2013
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- Critic Score
It's an album about what war does to the aggressor, as much as what it does to the vanquished victim.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
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- Critic Score
Catchy yet abrasive, noisy yet intimate, kind of funny yet also kind of scary, this is post-pop at its most vertiginously original.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 2, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 27, 2014
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- Critic Score
The mood of uplifting-melancholia survives and this time out Vernon needs no dramatic backstory. Clearly, his is a talent that loves company as much as it loves misery.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 20, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 13, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 12, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
Posted Sep 15, 2011 -
- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 2, 2012
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- Critic Score
It's close to the best of all music I know.... A second CD of later, unreleased material with some genuine gold among the dross.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 15, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 8, 2013
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- Critic Score
A fascinating collection of songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 25, 2013
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- Critic Score
Over 13 tunes, Akinmusire and his very hot quintet (featuring Walter Smith III on tenor sax and a great drummer, Justin Brown) take the basic format of post-bop straightahead jazz and tease it around with absolute authority.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 31, 2011
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- Critic Score
14 songs of keening, romantic acoustic music of great seriousness and lightness of being.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 4, 2012
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- Critic Score
To the relief of anyone who carries a torch for the reclusive genius, it's a beauty.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 21, 2011
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- Critic Score
The worldy influence remains but never overwhelms and the album contains at least half a dozen songs that are as simple and profound as anything Simon has ever written.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 15, 2011
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- Critic Score
The wisdom expressed is crusty but benign, poetic and sometimes witty.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
Helpnessness Blues is, like its predecessor, archaic and pastoral to the last.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 2, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 1, 2012
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- Critic Score
Arrangements are simple, bluegrass-inflected and rich in acoustic textures. Warm and thick as a hayrick.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 5, 2013
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- Critic Score
The Cumbrian quartet haven't fumbled the ball with the follow-up. Smother, recorded in the shadow of Snowdonia, tinkles and twinkles like the classiest adult-alternative pop of the 1980s.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2011
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- Critic Score
The more you listen, the less the album reveals; her vocals fall between sultry and sterile, and you wish, to take two of her professed influences, that she was a little less Sade, and a little more Chaka Khan.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 20, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2013
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- Critic Score
Not to say Cohen is not an artist to be treasured, just that Old Ideas may not be entirely essential.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jan 30, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jan 22, 2013
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- Critic Score
The material is all Mehldau's and quality varies from the standing ovations of the opening and closing tunes to lesser tricked-up vamps, but bass and drums groove superbly throughout.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 19, 2012
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- Critic Score
There is joy in these grooves; the attentive care of studio perfectionists, and the warm embrace of an old friend.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 10, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 27, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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- Critic Score
Maybe now he can sleep a little less on floors and spend more time making gorgeous albums like this. Please.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jan 21, 2014
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- Critic Score
The occasional off-kilter touch throws things sufficiently askew to deny listeners any complacency.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 20, 2013
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- Critic Score
Parker's music is approached from a post-Coltrane, post-free jazz aesthetic, with the rhythmic edginess of bebop elided into an all-the-time-in-the-world fluidity. A masterpiece.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
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- Critic Score
Though it's far from his worst album, it's his least commercial – with its harsh beats, mangled vocals, and Marilyn Manson samples, it mimics the aesthetics of a DIY mixtape.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 24, 2013
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- Critic Score
This rocks harder and faster than those fellow Tuareg bluesmen, partly due to the noticeable pop influence of another Malian act, Amadou & Mariam.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 1, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 15, 2013
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- Critic Score
It happens to be their most cohesive and convincing effort yet.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2013
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- Critic Score
Ferguson's smoky tones recall the young Aretha Franklin at her more restrained, [but] it's all ever so slightly boring.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 29, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Dec 5, 2011
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- Critic Score
Though his appeal remains frustratingly specialist, with each release it becomes clearer that Callahan is the natural successor to Leonard Cohen.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 16, 2013
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- Critic Score
This is accessible, song-based contemporary jazz at its most earnest, ordered and empowering.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 3, 2011
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- Critic Score
This is Cash at his rawest and most riveting, singing his soul out to platoons, prisoners and presidents alike. Hard to describe in terms that are adequate.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Dec 13, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 17, 2012
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- Critic Score
While there's perhaps a surfeit of synth-washes, the beautiful "Winter Elegy" superbly fulfils the opening promise.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 23, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 19, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 20, 2013
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- Critic Score
One moment--the Jason Molina tribute “JM”--is startling enough to forgive the clunking stadium-grunge workouts that seem, conversely, to be bringing Strand of Oaks to wider attention.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 24, 2014
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 10, 2012
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- Critic Score
Blunderbuss does, at times approach his finest work. But it doesn't do anything he hasn't already done.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
A welcome addition to the Beastie canon, and if it gets them back out on the road, it'll be an absolutely precious one.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 2, 2011
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
This is an album that's ostentatiously overloaded on melody, and on all-round sonic luxury. This is the one.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2011
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- Critic Score
An album which should win prizes (but won't), and hearts (and will).- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 26, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 3, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 28, 2012
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- Critic Score
Fear Fun is the kind of album that can name-check Sartre, Heidegger and Neil Young in the same song.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Apr 30, 2012
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- Critic Score
It’s business as usual, only with a lusher production than expected and a tad too much emphasis on Western rock’s tired tropes in some of the licks.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Oct 14, 2013
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 14, 2014
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- Critic Score
There’s a personal context (Mac’s dad was a famous singer of spirituals), the band is great, the vibe folksy.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jul 1, 2013
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- Critic Score
It may not be the best Wilco album ever, but with care and consideration it may well turn out to be your favourite.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 26, 2011
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- Critic Score
The vibe is convivial. And though the great man can't put his cancer-strangled voice to every number, he can still swing the nuts off a Slingerland kit in between chesting a nifty mandolin.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 31, 2011
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- Critic Score
Bar that electric guitar, this is the kind of music that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear on an old piece of 78rpm vinyl rescued from a car-boot sale (which is, of course, meant as a compliment).- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 18, 2013
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- Critic Score
Expect more straightforward, big-vocal, soul-funk numbers, and fewer immediate hits. But compared with most R&B records, Monae is still lightyears ahead.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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- Critic Score
The band return to the slow-and-low, sinister alt-boogie that made their name, with Homme's satisfying dirty badass guitar sound in full effect.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 3, 2013
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- Critic Score
Commendably, the Bury band's fifth album doesn't see them chasing the mainstream or pandering to the ear of the daytime radio dilettante.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 9, 2011
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- Critic Score
Watson packaged up the month that he spent riding the train, using his original recordings, adding his own narration, throwing in some interviews, and creating something magical.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jan 4, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Nov 14, 2011
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- Critic Score
The overall theme is utopia defiled. Until, that is, Deacon – ever the optimist – brings it all together on "Manifest", the big rapturous finale.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 27, 2012
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Sep 10, 2012
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- Critic Score
The very home-made, amateur-sounding production, coupled with what was obviously a fully formed musical vision, carries great charm and will appeal to fans of Scottish indie jazz weirdo Bill Wells as much as funkers, although only the first two of eight tracks excel.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Dec 11, 2013
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- Critic Score
It's that rare thing: an album that will reward repeated listening by drip-feeding you its secrets.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 10, 2013
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- Critic Score
We get grooves as smooth and tight as Lycra, funky stabs of brass and arch lyrics delivered with cool detachment.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Oct 15, 2012
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- Critic Score
Words and Music, the first full studio album in an aeon from Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, is a masterclass of pop theory and practice in perfect harmony.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 25, 2012
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- Critic Score
The occasional familiar, Carpenters-esque track aside, it makes for an exhilarating musical progression--even as his lyrical style remains unchanged.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Mar 11, 2013
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- Critic Score
Charges of over-solemnity may be levelled its way, but only occasionally are the melodic and narrative threads lost to a focus on miasmic, brush-stroked atmospherics.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 16, 2014
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- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Aug 23, 2011
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- Critic Score
As with some diseases, the album gets worse before it gets better, but by the end you're left stunned in admiration. Hell, there's even a redemptive arc. Amazing.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2011
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- Critic Score
ODIGTS is the soul album of the century. It might yet turn out to be the album of the year- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Jun 5, 2012
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- Critic Score
Post-millennial indie boy-rock has taken a savage beating here. And it may prove the best it’s ever had.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted May 6, 2013
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- Critic Score
It's a little too polished for the Oh Brother... crowd, but fans of Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss should take note.- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
- Posted Feb 24, 2011
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