Inside the Rose

These New Puritans - Inside the Rose
Critic Score
Based on 25 reviews
2019 Ratings: #383 / 805
User Score
Based on 190 ratings
2019 Rank: #477
Liked by 4 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
musicOMH

Inside The Rose is a wonder. A beautiful, dramatic, idiosyncratic album.

90
God Is in the TV

It’s an absolute masterpiece, their finest work, an album to rave about and wave in the faces of those who claim that no one makes classic albums any more and music was so much better in my day and oh shut the fuck up will you.

90
The Line of Best Fit

By dreaming forwards, These New Puritans have created a piece of art that is strikingly modern yet simultaneously timeless. In their quest for innovation, they have created a ravishing dream.

80
Northern Transmissions

‘Inside the Rose’ is starkly beautiful and the perfect vehicle to convey the length and breadth of These New Puritans’ peerless creativity.

80
Crack Magazine

The band ... heighten our senses with everything from frenetic vibraphones, synapse-tingling orchestral strings, anxiety-inducing drones and heavenly choral hums. It’s a bold and typically brave offering.

80
Dork

It’s an album that is direct and uncompromising, but full of possibility.

80
The Guardian

It feels less like a lunge for the charts than another stopping point on an increasingly fascinating musical journey.

80
The Skinny

Marking a slight departure from their neo-classical past, Southend-on-Sea's These New Puritans have a punt at pop on Inside The Rose – and it’s a direct hit.

80
Under the Radar
As the music world mourns the death of Mark Hollis, there is only one band that can come close to carrying the mantle of Talk Talk and his solo work. These New Puritans are that band. Do not miss this album.
80
No Ripcord

On Inside of Rose, the duo chisel their rimy, amorphous arrangements into a finely pointed portrait of emotional disintegration.

80
AllMusic

Over a decade into their career, These New Puritans continue to defy expectation or catagory, making a significant event out of each release.

78
Pitchfork

These New Puritans have developed a sound that is at once unusually specific and unusually vague, matching music and lyrics in a mode of soft, insistent questioning that opens and opens without ever disclosing its cloistered center.

70
Clash

It quickly emerges as their most direct and focused work yet, which at its best is immensely powerful but whose sheer force does lend itself to a certain indistinctness.

70
Loud and Quiet

While we’ve come to anticipate maverick innovation from TNP, ‘Inside The Rose’ is their most immediate and open-handed album to date.

70
Drowned in Sound

Some listeners will have been craving something more alienating to sink their teeth into, but what we actually have is an appetising, confident statement of intent from a band that want us to know that they are still a force in contemporary music.

60
Spectrum Culture
It’s beautiful, sure, but it’s sometimes hard to not miss their ramshackle early days, before their ambitions eclipsed their ability to make music that was both artful and fun.
55
The 405

The duo’s latest, Inside The Rose, is equal parts evolution and regression. A lot happens over the course of 40 minutes, much of it feeling like they’re filling in spaces not because they need to be filled but because they feel iffy about how long a passage can hold the listener’s attention.

40
DIY

Getting to the end is a slog. Sometimes, maybe you can just be a bit too clever for your own good.

40
NME

There’s a gothic tint to These New Puritans’ take on pop, but like a sub-par Depeche Mode, it’s lacking in brightness or brilliance.

tha138
66

The Barnett twins took care of everything, turned their gaze to the future through their old glasses and filled with their pop-art a whole, new album that gives the impression that we have already met, when, at the same time, it aims to a closer relation.

usedtobe
82

Superb album. Very cohesive and sonically lush.

FatalNoise
72

Fairly interesting art rock record but it just feels a bit long at times, like after a while I’ll get bored of a couple tracks and I’d like to think I’ve got pretty good patience, especially for rock style music. Anyway, some really interesting instrumentals, as expected. I’m loving the flow too, each track has been very precisely fit in its place on the record

tha138
66

The Barnett twins took care of everything, turned their gaze to the future through their old glasses and filled with their pop-art a whole, new album that gives the impression that we have already met, when, at the same time, it aims to a closer relation.

FatalNoise
72

Fairly interesting art rock record but it just feels a bit long at times, like after a while I’ll get bored of a couple tracks and I’d like to think I’ve got pretty good patience, especially for rock style music. Anyway, some really interesting instrumentals, as expected. I’m loving the flow too, each track has been very precisely fit in its place on the record

manicure
79

Inside the Rose will not be remembered as These New Puritans' most ambitious work, but it's definitely a step forward after the mess and lack of direction of Fields of Reeds.
I would describe this album as sombre and sophisticated, neoclassical synthpop with darkwave tints. It looks at the past more than the future, but songs are dramatic and beautiful, consistent in quality and focused in direction. Vocals are not always spot-on, but the bewitchingly ethereal, texturally rich arrangements are ... read more

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Added on: January 26, 2019