Though certainly a busy album on the whole, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros finds the band pursuing their musical vision with all the fresh-faced enthusiasm that one would expect from them, and much more besides.
With transient arrangements and free voices guiding this album’s sound, earnest listeners can expect to feel at each sonic juncture.
It’s unfortunate, then, that the band’s third album sounds so restrained. Ringleader Alex Ebert produced the album and sonically, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros feels slick and compressed.
Psychedelic San Francisco guitars and harmonies, along with a collection of intricate tambourines, horns, and whiskey chatter all prove a sound far more complex than that of, say, the commercial freight folk train Mumford and Sons.
Like 2012’s ‘Here’, this doesn’t hit the excellent ‘Up From Below’’s heights, but among the slightly more restrained cuts ... there’s enough to warrant leaving any overly-discerning tendencies at the door and forgive them their obvious flaws.
Only a handful of the tracks here have a lot of staying power, and the rest, while always colorful and even enjoyable, are fast to fade.
For whatever reason, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros haven't learned any appreciable new moves since 2009's Up From Below.
It's not the music that sinks Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, it's those lyrics: well-intentioned, certainly, but as deep as the bowl on a one-hitter.
Hardly anything registers as more than a blip, with the vast majority of the songs being not so much boring as immediately forgetful.
#78 | / | Amazon |