Funny how differently people can see the same thing isn't it? They say in pitchfork that it's a 'thin record'and that it 'lacks imagination'. My feelings are pretty much the polar opposite! Ah well, you can't please all the people all the time...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/arts/music/goldfrapp-brings-tales-of-us-to-beacon-theater.html?ref=music&_r=0

New York Times.

Manages to be a positive review of both the album and the concert at the Beacon theater. :)

Halloween_Jack said:

Oh dear. A couple of people tweeted Alison pointing out the less-than-great pitchfork review and, well... she responded - not in an angry way, but seemingly somewhat affected... and then deleted her tweets.

I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to avoid and/or ignore criticism in the media. Alison and Will must surely take heart from the flood of overwhelmingly positive comments and reviews from fans - old and new. As Alison said... that's what really counts.

Damn, really? I didn't see that. There was me hoping it didn't negatively affect her...

Halloween_Jack said:

I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to avoid and/or ignore criticism in the media.

it was probably a lot easier before twitter existed tbh

ping said:

i'm never entirely sure why people feel the need to point that sort of stuff out to her. 

mte. it seems like they just want to see her reaction

Joey said:

I hate Pitchfork. Hate. They are always contrarian about everything just for the sake of being so. Meanwhile they gave that AWFUL new Janelle Monae record a "Best New Music" rating. UGH! If you can't hear the craftsmanship and utter imagination that went into the making of this record well then you're just not listening to it, in my opinion. Even if the sound isn't for you, you can't deny the quality.

Janelle's album is pretty good though. :P

I'm sorry to have posted the Pitchfork link on "Reviews by Us", made a mistake ! Anyway, I expected a good rating from them... In vain ! They still love Supernature and Felt Mountain so much, and still denigrate 7th Tree so hard lol. All their ratings for Goldfrapp are rather incoherent :

Felt Mountain : 8.0
Black Cherry : 5.8
Supernature : 7.0
Seventh Tree : 4.6
Head First : 6.6
Tales of Us 6.1

That last review is a rag, they don't even go all the way and only talk about like 4 songs.

they're obviously idiots

While I disagree with the Pitchfork review, it is at least thoughtfully written.  We all have artists we embrace who don't always get universal critical acclaim.  I can deal with a somewhat negative review if the reviewer appears to have spent some time with the work and has laid out his/her reasoning.  It's when they're immediately dismissive and appear to have spent all of 30 minutes on the review experience that I lose patience.

If I'm being honest here, my initial play of the album felt somewhat similar to Pitchfork's.  Lovely from start to finish but perhaps a bit indistinct and "samey".  Of course, upon multiple listens, the subtle pleasures of the album revealed themselves and the individual nature of each song became more distinguishable and memorable for me.  I think it would be interesting to know how many times a reviewer has listened to an album before reading his/her review.  There are certainly some albums which have so many immediate pleasures that they can be fully appreciated upon your first or second listen.  I don't think Tales of Us is such an album.  It's a cliche, but this album does really reward repeated listening.  I would imagine that with deadlines and limited resources for arts criticism, many critics have a very limited time to spend with new albums. 

Sometimes, those end of year lists (which I must admit, I like) are a better way to gage the critical response to an album because at outlets like the AV Club, Village Voice, Pitchfork etc., the lists are voted on by multiple reviewers/editors.  I imagine that despite some high profile mixed reviews, we'll be seeing Tales of Us on most of those best of year lists. 

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