Albums to watch

Miss Anthropocene

Grimes

Miss Anthropocene

Fifth album of alternative electro-pop from the Montreal-based musician Claire Boucher

ADM rating[?]

7.5

Label
4AD
UK Release date
21/02/2020
US Release date
21/02/2020
  1. 10.0 |   The Independent

    A masterful, genre-spanning triumph
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  2. 10.0 |   The Irish Times

    By removing herself from the mortal world, Grimes holds up a mirror to mankind and with savage accuracy, reflecting the clawed desperation that we call reality. What could have been an eye-rolling excursion in the wrong hands is an eye-opening one instead
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  3. 10.0 |   NOW

    Boucher's production prowess, beautifully complex and ambitious songwriting, is self-evident on Miss Anthropocene
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  4. 9.0 |   Northern Transmissions

    Miss Anthropocene doesn’t stray far from what we’ve come to expect from Grimes but it’s also that we’ve come to expect a surprises from her that nothing on here seems at all rote or formulaic
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  5. 8.4 |   Sputnik Music (staff)

    Miss Anthropocene takes everything about Grimes the musician – her uncanny ability to build a song out of parts no one ever thought to put together before, that idiosyncratic voice, her ear for a classic melody – and concisely packages it into her most penetrating record yet
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  6. 8.4 |   Earbuddy

    Miss Anthropocene is not a flawless record, but it is excellent enough to transform its flaws into blessings
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  7. 8.3 |   Consequence Of Sound

    Claire Boucher’s fifth record is her darkest, most ambitious project yet
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  8. 8.2 |   Pitchfork

    Grimes’ first project as a bona fide pop star is more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Her genuineness shines through the album’s convoluted narrative, and the songs are among her finest
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  9. 8.0 |   Clash

    This piece of work is a constant tug-of-war between humanity, nature, and technology, and our complex relationship with the place we call home
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  10. 8.0 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    No matter who’s responsible for the myth of Grimes – the artist herself, the vulture-like press or our simple desire for spectacle – the art in this album remains: true and immutable and sublime
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  11. 8.0 |   NME

    Grimes takes on 21st Century celebrity, environmentalism and – most knotty of all – romantic love. This is a record stuffed with imagination and packed with beauty
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  12. 8.0 |   The Music

    Featuring some of Grimes' best work, Miss Anthropocene takes us to the party that’s sure to happen at the end of the world
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  13. 8.0 |   Crack

    Grimes has consistently challenged our assumptions about what pop music is and what it can be. The best many artists can hope for is to hold a mirror up to a shared reality and reflect something meaningful, but on Miss Anthropocene, Grimes conceptualises a vision of the future accessible only through her art
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  14. 8.0 |   The Guardian

    Notionally a concept album about the goddess of climate crisis, the Canadian’s fifth album is actually a compellingly chaotic statement about her own private life
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  15. 8.0 |   Slant Magazine

    The album is a challenging exploration of the conflicting boundaries and boundlessness of personhood, technology, and society
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  16. 8.0 |   XS Noize

    She proudly follows in the footsteps of other female trailblazers like Bjork, Siouxie Sioux and Kate Bush. The never boring always impressive Grimes may have taken a while to release her latest album but it was worth the wait
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  17. 8.0 |   musicOMH

    There’s the feeling that, behind her mask of the anthropomorphic goddess of climate change, maybe, just maybe, this is Grimes’ most honest and reflective album yet
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  18. 8.0 |   Q

    The album has flavours of happy hardcore, trip-hop and Bollywood music. Print edition only

  19. 8.0 |   No Ripcord

    Learning that Miss Anthropocene was a concept album immediately made the grading curve more difficult. Before it would have been simple to overlook a few inconsistent tracks in a sea of exceptional electropop; but with only a vague sense of unease to unify them, the incohesive numbers make less sense
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  20. 7.0 |   God Is In The TV

    By the end of the record, you could indeed feel completely powerless and submissive to Grimes’s new concept and change in sound
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  21. 7.0 |   Spectrum Culture

    Miss Anthropocene is a far darker record than anything Grimes has ever released
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  22. 7.0 |   All Music

    Even if it's not always as vivid as some of her earlier albums, Miss Anthropocene is often fascinating and defies expectations in ways that still fit her always thought-provoking aesthetic
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  23. 7.0 |   Exclaim

    She's become a controversial public figure whose whole persona is like one big multimedia art project, so this is a welcome return to her wheelhouse
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  24. 7.0 |   DIY

    Undoubtedly the singer’s darkest album yet
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  25. 7.0 |   Loud And Quiet

    After a career of anything-goes audaciousness — 2015’s Art Angels being her zenith in both cases — Miss Anthropocene ironically comes off as her most subdued LP where anyone might have expected it to be bacchanalian feast
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  26. 7.0 |   The Quietus

    There are bangers on Grimes fifth album, Miss Anthropocene, but it wastes too much of its energy pretending to be edgier than it really is
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  27. 6.0 |   The Skinny

    Grimes' fifth album Miss Anthropocene is uneven, gloomy and baffling, and yet contains enough of her magic to remain an enthralling listen
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  28. 6.0 |   Evening Standard

    Big ideas about the future get buried in sonic murk
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  29. 6.0 |   The FT

    Canadian’s climate change-themed album opens strongly with a swooning piece of electronic pop but the second half falters
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  30. 6.0 |   Rolling Stone

    The button-pushing pop experimentalist’s latest is a concept album (of sorts) on the climate crisis
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  31. 6.0 |   PopMatters

    Ironically, you may wind up wishing that Grimes' vision of a scorched Earth was a bit more fun
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  32. 6.0 |   The Arts Desk

    The portentousness dominates, and the odd, off-beam humanity is all too frequently left as just a trace
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  33. 6.0 |   Vinyl Chapters

    Miss Anthropocene’s concept is weak and barely perceptible when dragged out to album length, the only consistency being derivative notions of rebellion and appropriation
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  34. 5.6 |   Paste Magazine

    An album on which, the more Boucher leans into her most elliptical interests, the more her music threatens to become exactly what she fears: obsolete
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  35. 5.0 |   Under The Radar

    For an artist whose past two albums were as impeccably curated as they were produced, the non-cohesiveness of Miss Anthropocene is bit of a disappointment, in spite of the record’s highlights
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