Long Way Home

Låpsley - Long Way Home
Critic Score
Based on 21 reviews
2016 Ratings: #383 / 1004
User Score
Based on 130 ratings
2016 Rank: #526
Liked by 6 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

91
Entertainment Weekly

The British songwriter marries dark, club-kid influences from her nights spent at Liverpool venues with crunching heartache on 12 lush songs that morph and twist her voice into various iterations.

80
The Irish Times

Lapsley takes the icy, alien electro-soul trappings and accoutrements which those acts have made merry with and does something quite idiosyncratic with them.

80
Mixmag
Both ‘Station’ and ‘Painter’ – originally recorded by messing around with GarageBand, a cheap keyboard and a £90 microphone – are icy and haunting, but ‘Falling Short’ is the real heartbreaker.
80
Albumism
While electro-soul-pop acts like Banks, James Blake, Lianne La Havas, and London Grammar represent the closest analogs, Låpsley nevertheless orchestrates an elegant and enrapturing sound that is fundamentally the product of her own unique vision and brave ambition.
80
NME

At 47 minutes, ‘Long Way Home’ may seem lengthy for a debut, but it feels cohesive without boxing Låpsley into a limited sound. With ’80s-style drum fills, epic choruses and up-tempo disco coexisting so comfortably, album two already feels like a tantalising prospect.

80
DIY

Her songs still carry the post-midnight isolation, but make no mistake - she’s writing straight-up anthems that could fly in any environment.

80
The Line of Best Fit

She has finally delivered what all those early tracks promised; a bedroom record conceived in the club that drags confessional pop music further into the future.

80
The Skinny

Though she’s on the edge of slipping into Adele-esque poperatics, this is a bold and confident first LP from a producer – and singer – with great potential.

80
Exclaim!

Låpsley has expressed a fondness for writing sad songs, and while there's a pervasive melancholy to Long Way Home, it remains both accessible and sonically explorative throughout.

80
NOW Magazine

She astutely avoids the obligatory peaks and valleys that many debuts haphazardly throw in to milk emotion, revelling in moody atmosphere.

78
Northern Transmissions
She is a songstress who is always center stage on her songs and she’s developed her emotions, voice, and sonics into a product of mass appeal without running away from her Merseyside vocal roots. She seems to be aiming for labelmate Adele’s territory with her vocal intonation, sometimes ruminating in a thicker, smoky tone and at others, employing an airy, wistful delivery.
75
Consequence of Sound

Exploring is a good word for a lot of what Låpsley does across these 12 tracks, and her most fascinating discoveries come when she pairs organic sounds with the aggressively synthetic soundscapes normally associated with electronic music.

70
XS Noize

Overall, I don’t think Long Way Home’s experimental nature will have masses of commercial value, but it is the sort of thing that could develop a cult following. Ultimately that is likely to give her a longer term career than smashing out hits for the masses.

70
Paste

In refusing to let the music industry’s ignorance affect her work, Låpsley proves her point: women can do this damn well on their own, when they’re given the chance. Long Way Home is a resounding success and hopefully the start of a very promising career.

70
AllMusic

If not a break-up album, a dreading-breaking-up album whose pace, palette, minor chords, and Låpsley's disquieted vocal performances all collaborate for a debut that's impressively locked into a distinct head space.

70
PopMatters

She’s created an unimpeachably well-crafted debut—something to gaze at, even if it is just a sequence of gazes itself.

70
musicOMH

There’s some real heart on display here, for sure, especially on the atmospheric likes of Painter or the beautiful torch ballad Tell Me The Truth.

66
Pitchfork

In other instances her voice dissolves into an overabundance of negative space, and listening to the less-inspired sections of Long Way Home can feel like trying to remember something boring that happened to you once.

60
The Guardian

The familiar post-dubstep hallmarks – minor-key piano, handclaps, pitched-down vocal samples – tastefully cradle her superb, if slightly affected, Adele-sounding voice as it delivers her girl-alone-in-the-world bedroom songs.

60
The Observer
It’s full of love trouble and tunes that are simultaneously wise beyond their years and still a little raw around the edges.
40
Uncut

Her debut concerns a profound heartbreak, but rarely do you sense the real pain that underpins these limp ballads and her aggressively mannered delivery.

JulianGomez974
75

It's not the greatest pop album of the year, but it has enough elements to attract fans and casual listeners. I went thinking that this would be very alternative and I did found that, but this also has a potential commercial sound which I didn't dislike at all. Låpsley voice is really beautiful, to me, it's what carries for most part of the record, even though, she tends to use a low-pitch effect that conflicts the atmosphere she builts through the song. Overall, I think it was a pretty ... read more

tha138
64

She's 19 years old, she has the right voice and she made the right choice by entering the elliptical, post-dubstep room of the pop factory.
What she really needs is to broaden her experiences, saving her effort and her time.

imabluefish
36

loved station and hurt me

imabluefish
36

loved station and hurt me

holsgr
30

questionable (★★☆☆☆)

tha138
64

She's 19 years old, she has the right voice and she made the right choice by entering the elliptical, post-dubstep room of the pop factory.
What she really needs is to broaden her experiences, saving her effort and her time.

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Track List

1Heartless
4:14
78
2Hurt Me
3:51
90
3Falling Short
3:23
80
4Cliff
4:28
83
5Operator (He Doesn't Call Me)
3:24
80
6Painter
3:08
78
7Tell Me the Truth
3:55
78
8Station
3:16
78
9Love Is Blind
4:10
90
10Silverlake
4:21
80
11Leap
4:49
79
12Seven Months
3:29
78
Total Length: 46 minutes

Year End Lists

#26/Albumism
#30/Entertainment Weekly
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Added on: January 19, 2016