The whole album echoes and clatters, is washed in with the tide and the dragged back out to sea. Every track has something distinct to capture the imagination, but it is the vocal range that is particularly interesting.
No one making music today merges the worlds of popular music, experimental music, Western classical music, and European folk music as expertly as Yann Tiersen and ∞ is one of his most fully realized projects.
Given its all-encompassing title, it's fitting that ∞ (Infinity) is one of Tiersen's most ambitious albums, but its grand scale only magnifies his music's heartfelt beauty.
All things considered, ∞ might not match the immediacy and imagination of its predecessor Skyline, but the record certainly has its buoyant moments of unadulterated joie de vivre.
The variety of sounds and instrumentation on the record is something to be admired.
At times, even on its better tracks, Infinity suffers from the weight of its own ambitions, obscuring great ideas in a wash of obstinate noise wrought by too many instruments in the mix
Surely satisfying to an unknown (but tiny) demographic, this record is instantly likeable, but it’s also just as immediately forgettable.
Tiersen never loses touch with his innate sense of melody, but the lack of edge means that ‘Infinity’’s charms are, in fact, finite.
For existing fans this is a tonally varied addition to his substantial oeuvre, but the record will likely prove too oblique, even passé, for more virgin ears.