Critical reception
Your Blues received positive reviews from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 79, based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". [10]
Matt LeMay of Pitchfork Media gave the album a very favorable review stating, "Like Bejar's 2002 release This Night, Your Blues constitutes a fundamental challenge to deeply ingrained conventions of sincerity and emotional honesty. The record's conceptual brilliance lies largely in Bejar's ability to craft deeply moving passages out of ostensibly artificial and contrived elements, subtly suggesting that all music, if not all human expression, is in effect some sort of artifice. Bejar's critical engagement with codified aesthetic techniques certainly renders Your Blues a less immediately "accessible" record, and can at first come off as kitschy or detached. But the album's unique and defiant expression makes this the most holistically accomplished album Bejar has released to date." [6]
The New Pornographers are a Canadian indie rock band, formed in 1997 in Vancouver. Presented as a musical collective and supergroup of singer-songwriters and musicians from multiple projects, the band has released nine studio albums to date. The band have received critical acclaim for their use of multiple vocalists and songwriters, as well as for the elements of power pop incorporated into their music. Pitchfork has described the band's sound as "peppy, gleeful, headstrong guitar pop", while Stereogum has retrospectively praised the band's debut album Mass Romantic as "one of the greatest and most immediate power pop albums ever rendered".
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Rounds is the third solo album by British electronic musician Kieran Hebden, released under his alias Four Tet on 5 May 2003 by Domino Recording Company. Wanting to make a more personal record, Hebden recorded and produced the album in his North London flat over ten months using a desktop computer and a home hi-fi system. Its ten tracks feature elements of hip hop, jazz and folk; apart from a guitar part recorded for "Slow Jam", the music is composed from between 200 and 300 samples, many processed beyond recognition.
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Nathaniel Merriweather Presents... Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By is the debut studio album by Lovage. It was released by 75 Ark in 2001. It peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.
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