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Art Angels

Grimes

Art Angels

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

ADM rating[?]

8.0

Label
4AD
UK Release date
06/11/2015
US Release date
06/11/2015
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  1. 10.0 |   NOW

    To call it pop might be simplifying, but Art Angels is relentlessly catchy
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  2. 10.0 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    Art Angels is the maximalist brainchild of a prodigious talent. It’s hugely entertaining. It’s delightfully bizarre. It’s refreshingly caustic
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  3. 10.0 |   Exclaim

    Grimes has given us a complete record that's everything pop should be in 2015: utterly uncompromising, imaginative and, somehow, universally accessible
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  4. 10.0 |   DIY

    With her fourth album, Claire Boucher opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, and gives the middle finger to expectation in the process
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  5. 9.1 |   Consequence Of Sound

    After Visions, the only thing Grimes could do was to grow as big as the landscape around her. Here’s her mountain
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  6. 9.1 |   A.V. Club

    It’s slick and gritty, fun and funny, and horrifying and grotesque all at once. It will also make you shake your ass like nothing else
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  7. 9.0 |   Gig Soup

    Not many self-sufficient artists could create such a beautiful beast
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  8. 9.0 |   The Quietus

    A fever dream of perfect, unsettling pop for a crumbling world. Jaw-breaking, brain-rattling and polymorphously perverse. Listen again and again for intense pleasure. Keep listening until you pass out sick
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  9. 9.0 |   PopMatters

    With a healthy boost in confidence and production value, Claire Boucher makes manifest her boundless passion for the manic whimsy of pop music
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  10. 8.5 |   Spectrum Culture

    Art Angels is what a pop album would sounds like if you took the top 10 chart and deliberately swapped everything for unexpected patterns and instruments
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  11. 8.5 |   Pitchfork

    She's a human zeitgeist, redrawing all the binaries and boundaries by which we define pop music and forcing us to come along.
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  12. 8.5 |   The 405

    Fourteen ambitiously avant-pop numbers, just as potently sugary as they are powerfully ominous
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  13. 8.2 |   Resident Advisor

    On Art Angels, the melodies are sharper and the vocals are clearer, but it's still Boucher at the helm
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  14. 8.0 |   State

    Having carved out a reputation as something of an underground indie-pop pioneer, Grimes will no doubt face accusations of selling out
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  15. 8.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    Art Angels is likely to emerge from 2015 as one of the most universally adored albums of the year
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  16. 8.0 |   Tiny Mix Tapes

    The depth of her pen-work finds its sonic foil in how she treats historical information: 90s vocal fetishes, jangly guitars, breakbeats, and souped hardware production
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  17. 8.0 |   Uncut

    Will only continue to yield further depths with time. Print edition only

  18. 8.0 |   The Independent

    It’s not so much that she’s changed direction completely, as that she’s drained her art of the obfuscating sonic blabber to leave her pop aesthetic
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  19. 8.0 |   Mojo

    One of 2015’s standout pop albums
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  20. 8.0 |   Clash

    'Art Angels' is boundary pushing, it’s listenable and it’s Boucher’s most ambitious and most consistent work to date.
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  21. 8.0 |   Spin

    She flicks between influences high and low, twisting the radio frequencies both domestic and extraterrestrial
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  22. 8.0 |   Under The Radar

    Grimes manages to face mounting hype with a skillful redefinition of boundaries. It may be new territory, but she's navigating it pretty damn well
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  23. 8.0 |   NME

    She's still laughing and not being normal, only this time, it's all the way to the ban
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  24. 8.0 |   FasterLouder

    While Art Angels definitely leans further toward pop than Visions did, this might say more about the state of pop in 2015 than it does about the record
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  25. 8.0 |   musicOMH

    Boucher’s pleasingly scattergun approach means that it doesn’t hold together as a fully coherent album. Yet after a couple of plays, the weird and wonderful world of Grimes soon starts to seep into you
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  26. 7.5 |   Earbuddy

    It feels like the culmination of what has been always bubbling below the surface in Grimes' music
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  27. 7.0 |   Rolling Stone

    Shape-shifting pop diva ups her game, stays delightfully weird
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  28. 7.0 |   Beardfood

    Is it revolutionary? No. Is it insanely listenable, addictive, subtle pop music? Yes
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  29. 7.0 |   Slant Magazine

    The worst that can be said of Art Angels is that its maximalist ambitions sometimes overshoot the needs of pop
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  30. 6.0 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    On Art Angels, we hear that high art experimentation fall into mainstream territory with only fleeting moments of brilliance
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  31. 6.0 |   The Observer

    Grimes has not reinvented the pop wheel, she’s just driven it off road a little
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  32. 4.0 |   The FT

    The results are underwhelming
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  33. 4.0 |   God Is In The TV

    The construction of the new songs are noticeably straightforward containing predictable 2010’s EDM elements such as thumping nightclub basslines, treble-tampering and repetitive drops, making it comparable to existing chart-toppers
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  34. Back to main chart

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Grimes: Art Angels

  • Download full album for just £8.49
  • 1. laughing and not being normal £0.89
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The album closes with the absolutely haunting “Howland,” named for the island where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were supposed to stop to refuel. Clocking in at eight and a half minutes and ending with actual field recordings of the island itself, it’s a worthy and mournful ending to a tragic story Under The Radar

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Sounds both like it could have been a long-lost session from 1996 and, somehow, perfectly of the moment Consequence Of Sound

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