The arrangements are exquisite from top to bottom, and producer Congleton – who worked with Clark on ‘Strange Mercy’ – helps make it easy for us all to love this giant of a record.
Love This Giant may have started life as a one-off experiment, but we can only hope that it is one that the two main protaganists choose to develop further in the future.
Love This Giant poses a challenge to our music sensibilities, and listening to it feels like a learning experience rather than entertainment.
The two musicians’ styles fit neatly over each other, sounding mutually rhythmic, arty, and full of hermetic insight.
The rich orchestration that underlies each track gives a sense of warmth that counterpoints the often cold, disconnected lyrics. It’s these contrasts that make Love This Giant one of the most original and thoroughly surprising releases of the year.
Eclectic and bold as it may be, Love This Giant is far from the bravest thing that either party has attempted. Still, it’s just the right side of crazy, and it’s never hip to be sane.
In turn, it’s less a collaboration and more a tutoring session on how new tricks can sharpen old perfection.
Distinctive enough to be a new entity, smart enough to fall back on a few familiar charms.
Although you wouldn’t expect anything less from artists of this high a caliber, it still comes as a pleasant surprise how cohesive, complete, and thought through Love This Giant is for a one-off all-star collab.
These are, quite simply, great songs. They are fun, they are emotional, and no two sound alike.
It is, in other words, a deeply weird and deeply lovely record, albeit one that listeners should do their best to listen to with as few preconceptions as possible.
Love this Giant is worth the climb up the beanstalk if you don’t mind maneuvering around a few thorns.
For all of the missteps, it’s the moments of dizzying brass playing from the backing musicians, the otherworldly pomp of Byrne and the stellar chops of Clark that saves the day.
The obtuse intellectualism of the lyrics and big band backing don’t cut it for a record that should have been less illusory and way more adventurous.
The mixture here leans heavily on Byrne, which is certainly not a bad thing, but Love This Giant doesn't take full advantage of Clark's guitar prowess or hypnotic voice.
Love This Giant isn't career-best material from either artist, sometimes lacking the kind of wilful experimentation we've come to expect from both.
On Love This Giant, the deft, delightful collaboration between the pair, the former Talking Heads frontman and the rising star of baroque alternative rock, proves to be that rare studio hook-up where the outcome is genuinely transformative.
It seems Giant will function less as a career highpoint for either artist, and more as a historical marker of the career trajectories of each participant.
Love This Giant has its share of promising elements, but as a collaborative project, it's far less than the sum of its two parts.
god why is her face fucked up i dont want to listen to this album because her face is so bulgy and it makes me so uncomfortable god
An endlessly fun listen, Love This Giant is a meeting of great creative minds, David Byrne of Talking Heads going head-to-head with indie darling St. Vincent to present a flashy series of quirky art pop tunes.
In its forty-minute runtime, Love This Giant packs a jazzy punch that still leaves me with plenty of giddy excitement with every relisten. By far, the album's mightiest moment is the album's beginning three-track-run of 'Who,' 'Weekend in the Dust,' and 'Dinner for Two,' serving as one ... read more
Ngl they look like they wanna kill me
Continuing my St Vincent dive, this one is a littttttttle bit of a let down. I still enjoyed it overall but the reason why I feel that way is because look who we are talking about here, fucking David Byrne and Anne Clark. Two artists that have made some of the most incredible music I’ve heard in my life. So idk maybe I shouldn’t have gone in with high expectations but I did a little bit. Either way, yeah I still didn’t dislike it. I ... read more
Ngl they look like they wanna kill me
Continuing my St Vincent dive, this one is a littttttttle bit of a let down. I still enjoyed it overall but the reason why I feel that way is because look who we are talking about here, fucking David Byrne and Anne Clark. Two artists that have made some of the most incredible music I’ve heard in my life. So idk maybe I shouldn’t have gone in with high expectations but I did a little bit. Either way, yeah I still didn’t dislike it. I ... read more
I probably would have enjoyed this more if it was just St. Vincent on vocals. Having said that, there were some pretty banal moments on here, such as I Am an Ape - wtf was that? Perhaps this is going to show that I don't like Byrne's writing, because I love Annie on her own.
1 | Who 3:49 | 87 |
2 | Weekend in the Dust 3:07 | 77 |
3 | Dinner for Two 3:42 | 77 |
4 | Ice Age 3:13 | 80 |
5 | I Am an Ape 3:05 | 78 |
6 | The Forest Awakes 4:52 | 85 |
7 | I Should Watch TV 3:08 | 82 |
8 | Lazarus 3:13 | 81 |
9 | Optimist 3:49 | 81 |
10 | Lightning 4:15 | 74 |
11 | The One Who Broke Your Heart 3:46 | 71 |
12 | Outside of Space & Time 4:18 | 76 |
#8 | / | BBC |
#9 | / | AllMusic |
#12 | / | NME |
#13 | / | musicOMH |
#22 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
#28 | / | Exclaim! |
#28 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
#30 | / | Paste |
#33 | / | Time Out London |
#34 | / | The Fly |