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10.0
38225
10.0 |
The Guardian
It's the perfect album: tender without being sentimental, experimental yet accessible, utterly unique to its maker
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9.1
38670
9.1 |
A.V. Club
A beautifully free-flowing set of tunes that soar and waft like a flock of starlings, building to a quietly epic mood that is too ruminative and introspective to suffer from grandiosity
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9.0
40491
9.0 |
Blurt
Tackling heady topics and dark facts in the language of deceptively simple folk-pop songs that make us smile more than weep
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9.0
41355
9.0 |
No Ripcord
Put simply, it’s lovely
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9.0
38046
9.0 |
The Line Of Best Fit
The richest, most addictive record he’s made since starting out in 1996; an intelligent, perceptive, extremely well-judged pace across welcoming shores of emotive, articulate pop music writ large with the innate power and exoticism of classical instrumentation
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8.6
38520
8.6 |
Paste Magazine
There is a bit of longing for the dynamic sounds of which he is capable, but what the album does remind us is that above all, Andrew Bird is a highly skilled musician
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8.3
38315
8.3 |
Pretty Much Amazing
It’s great. But, as with everything he does, there is much more to the story
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8.0
38038
8.0 |
Drowned In Sound
He’s never sounded better
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8.0
38039
8.0 |
Rave Magazine
It’s obvious that Bird’s impressive record of producing layered, complex and yet immediately accessible and inviting songs is set to continue
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8.0
38040
8.0 |
The Skinny
After all the loops, the tangents and the breakdowns, remain a set of fantastic, hummable pop songs that we can confidently call Bird’s strongest to date
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8.0
38068
8.0 |
Mojo
A seductive lesson in understated beauty. Print edition only
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8.0
38084
8.0 |
musicOMH
Disparate and idiosyncratic yet still unified and every day, Break It Yourself is a record which is beguilingly simple but retains and recasts Bird’s signature complexity
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8.0
38218
8.0 |
The Independent
The results more than justify the sometimes obtuse methods
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8.0
38257
8.0 |
Clash
Andrew Bird has created a veritable treasure trove of a record
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8.0
38258
8.0 |
The Fly
He has managed to mingle his delightfully plucked and bowed violin with songs of whimsical complexity, lyrical darkness and, importantly, gorgeous pop
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8.0
38275
8.0 |
Independent on Sunday
If you like smart pop and are not familiar, hearing Bird for the first time will feel like discovering a new planet
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8.0
38278
8.0 |
The Observer
Bird conducts his experiments with the lightest of touches: his ingenuity matched by a gift for simple, lilting melodies
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7.9
38398
7.9 |
Beats Per Minute
The sound of Bird settling down, becoming comfortable with his music and letting it come off as natural, without losing the sense of enjoyment and the hypnotic dynamism of his core elements
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7.5
38377
7.5 |
Pitchfork
It's a little like the world-- the longer you live with it, the more the details become apparent and the more you can feel it all working together
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7.0
38946
7.0 |
Prefix
This latest effort from Bird is comfortable, like an old, warm coat or the guitar you haven’t picked up in a while, a record tinged with more nostalgia than raw creative force
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7.0
38399
7.0 |
Bowlegs
As a piece of work it creaks with the musician’s inimitable personality, much like the aged timber used to build his instruments of choice
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7.0
38403
7.0 |
Rolling Stone
He might be gratingly pretentious, if he wasn't so unobtrusively amiable
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7.0
38499
7.0 |
Consequence Of Sound
Rather than the grandiose, glistening pop of his last few discs, this new record plays on muted tones, ballads that work into your subconscious rather than overwhelming it
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7.0
38280
7.0 |
Slant Magazine
Clearly Bird is more interested in the journey than the destination on Break It Yourself
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7.0
38304
7.0 |
Under The Radar
No longer hell-bent on trying to demonstrate he's the smartest man in the room, Bird has once again proven he may just be the cleverest
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7.0
38066
7.0 |
Uncut
Bird lets a little air into his previously overly studied exercises
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6.0
38070
6.0 |
Q
A maze-y path through pop, folk, classical, country, Afrobeat and even P-funk. Print edition only
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6.0
39586
6.0 |
Spin
Genteel aesthete inches near the borders of his tastefully manicured comfort zone, but never past them
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5.0
38379
5.0 |
PopMatters
Andrew Bird is one of the great musical visionaries of the past decade, but on Break It Yourself – and for the second album in a row – it sounds like he’s still trying to figure out his next step
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