john

If I never listen to another 60’s psychedelic diatribe about kings and rulers or a oneness that has been revealed to the narrator (who never sings well), I think I’ll be ok. Whatever the opposite charisma is, it can be assigned to this record.

I never recovered from the lalalala’s on “Witches Hat”. What some might find twee and charming, I found to be uninspired and bland. It’s a 1/5

Obligatory "I dont speak french bout found this base-level enjoyable".

Without knowing the lyrical content on first listen, things sort of mesh together into one blend of songs until he locks tf in on "Quartier nord".

Hard to get too granular on my judgement of this one, I casually enjoyed and was also pretty happy it ended when it did. Soft 3/5

There were times this record got under my skin for a few reasons. Number one, the masters and sonic quality killed me. Specifically, the drums sound SO thin. The snare has so much reverb on it, yet has no depth. It was like me tapping my nail on the wall of an empty room. Ugh. And second, the sound this band puts forth is an awkward middle ground between the ends of post-punk and the beginnings of REM.

This all really sucks because under the middling aesthetics are some super catchy compositions performed by guys that clearly put their all into it. The tempo switches and anthemic choruses on "Back From Somewhere" are a good example of the effort put into this project.

My frustrations did fade with time as I came to accept the way this groups sounded. But the inverse also kinda came to be true all at once too? I got bored of the same song feeling like it was coming down the pipe over and over again, even if the energy was good. Very conflicting.

Ultimately, I had to drag myself to the finish line. I was good and done by "It's Not Peculiar". 2/5 stars -- I can see this bands exact place in the development of pop and alternative music, but I think The Replacements also eventually took up a similar space and do it better.

Hey look! An album where Brazilian Portuguese is spoken and it’s not from someone with the last name Gilberto! On that note, there’s some really cool fusion songs referencing Brazilian sounds. “Ratamahatta”, “Breed Apart”, and “Lookaway” all are so textured and unique in their pulling from Brazilian music and native culture.

So the cool factor is through the roof on this album. But it didn’t have to be over an hour. “Jasco” was so needed purely because I was exhausted with the wall of metal sound I was experiencing without relief.

I’d say toss out some of the more prototypical metal stuff in the middle in favor of some of the creative pulls like “Itsari” and we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. Music that references indigenous peoples in a reverential manner always ages well. Strong 3/5

Music that surely made it big on the blogs, but never cracked American radio iirc. I think the states had a fair line of reasoning to stonewall this album, I’m not blown away by anything on here. A lot of it rests above a baseline of quality, but none of it rockets off into excellence.

“Isle Of Her” and others sound like an attempt to recreate Damon Albarn’s voice in a slightly more indie rock / alt-dance setting.

It’s hard to give this record the light of day when Justice and MGMT were setting the blogosphere on fire at the same time. This album doesnt move the soul like those guys did. 3/5