Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited

Mercury Rev - Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited
Critic Score
Based on 21 reviews
2019 Ratings: #384 / 805
User Score
Based on 76 ratings
2019 Rank: #687
Liked by 3 people
February 8, 2019 / Release Date
LP / Format
Alt-Country / Genre
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

90
PopMatters

The new recording is by turns lovely, haunting, exciting, and emotive—a mix of covers and originals that Gentry first put together—that evoke a mythical South baked in the lazy sunshine glow of memory.

85
Spectrum Culture

Delta Sweete Revisited is a gorgeously rendered re-imagining of an under-appreciated artist’s most under-appreciated work down by an equally under-appreciated band with a number of higher profile female vocalists in tow.

80
musicOMH
The arrangements may be cleaner and songs embellished with alternative focuses but it would be hard to claim they don’t have the interests of the originals at heart. Seen as a sensitive collective tribute it’s hard to view it as anything else than a success.
80
AllMusic

With its lavish arrangement and Williams' gritty performance, the band find new ways of celebrating one of the great underappreciated artists of the '60s and '70s -- something that's true of Bobbie Gentry's the Delta Sweete Revisited as a whole.

80
American Songwriter
Rev’s somewhat radical interpretation will alert Americana fans to Gentry’s unfairly neglected gem, now ready for a belated rediscovery.
80
Loud and Quiet
There remains something rather ghostly to exhuming a long-forgotten album and decorating its simple corpse so flamboyantly; that the eerieness rather suits the album, however, is testament to Mercury Rev’s curatorial skill.
80
The Arts Desk

'Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited' is a sensitive re-rendering which approaches each song on a case-by-case basis.

80
The Sydney Morning Herald
Mercury Rev gives the music an effective psychedelic sheen, ramping up the mythic feel, but some of the singers seem to prioritise pretty vocals over inhabiting the characters.
80
Mojo
Rebooted with tender opulence, affectionate awe, and full commitment o a widescreen, almost transcendental experience.
80
God Is in the TV

It’s a record that stands as a celebration of the trailblazing spirit of figures like Gentry and Bunyan, women who made early inroads into the music industry on their own terms, and it’s a record that comes across as firmly led by their successors.

72
Paste
The album does not aim to recreate arrangements from a half-century prior; the emphasis is on radical reinterpretation, and that mission succeeds.
70
Uncut

Lucinda Williams' version of Gentry's iconic "Ode To Billie Joe" leaves much to be desired but ... Overall, this one's worth it.

70
Classic Rock

Sweete, and then, deliciously soured.

70
Drowned in Sound

The Delta Sweete Revisited probably isn’t destined to be anything more than an interesting footnote in the career of anybody involved. But it certainly has something to it: a mood, an ambience, an ethereal sultriness, chilly northern mists turning to hot southern steam.

67
Consequence of Sound
The experimental rockers and several guests unite to pay tribute to a classic Southern album.
60
Q Magazine
They carefully remodel Gentry's Southern storytelling.
45
Pitchfork
A half-century after the release of Bobbie Gentry’s imaginative second album, the art-rock band revisits it as if in a daze but with the help of over a dozen brilliant singers.
Blackclover
51

This is what happens when Yerself is Steam goes down to 0.

LepardRyan
45

What purpose did this serve? We get some boring, obsolete, Americana album every week now and now another except it's a passable tribute album? The only impressive thing about this is the quantity of recognizable features, but none of them provide a performance that makes any one track stand out.

45/100 (Below Average)

ryanreviews
40

Completely uninteresting and not doing any justice nor putting a new spin on the original. Disappointed is an understatement.

Purchasing Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?


Added on: November 19, 2018