I wish I liked this more. It's completely fine, but I think these are the least interesting songs they've written.
Obviously Shea is good y'all good writers write for bad publications all the time pitchfork has and has had tons of fantastic writers, they still fuckin blow
they gave Cloud Nothings and Japandroids both a fucking 2. I can't take them seriously for that alone
It's a weird site and their writers aren't good. Can't stand the style they write in Hyden's review of this is pretty good, he's quite a bit more into it than I am but his take is the closest I've seen to reality
I like this album more than most music writers, apparently. Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life • chorus.fm
this steven hyden post was a good read about it, and outlines the album's story pretty decently from what i can tell though i haven't dug into the lyrics too much yet: Japandroids' 'Near To The Wild Heart Of Life' Is A Minor Miracle i thought craig's review was good but reading it right after the hyden one did not add much insight, they made several similar points and the pieces were structured semi similarly then i checked out the pitchfork review which is lazy considering this is a high profile release and the reviewer draws on the black keys when there....doesn't appear to be any reasoning behind drawing on the black keys? i also wonder if pitchfork is still assigning site-mandated scores on reviews because the 7.1 by their standards doesn't match the text. the text gave that album like a 4. the album definitely shows the band growing up/away from celebration rock but the reviews are making it seem like a more drastic change than it is on surface level. i wonder if my thoughts on that will change as i listen more though, only started listening to it two hours ago