With Heads Up, Warpaint may have crafted their best album yet, one that adroitly harnesses and alchemizes genres, moods, and sounds to suit their many purposes.
The band sound rejuvenated on Heads Up, solidifying their place as one of the most cohesive and adventurous bands out there.
The understated widescreen desolation of their eponymous second album marked a breakthrough for Warpaint, their artfully washed-out funk-punk making more sense than ever. The follow-up, Heads Up, balances that downbeat vibe with more upbeat, poppy elements, creating a tension that’s electric.
Many shades of grey and fragments of sound have gone into Heads Up, which is much greater than the sum of its parts.
The absolute pleasure of listening to the voices possessed within this band remains as staggering as ever. But it’s the canvas over which they are being pulled which has a new texture.
Warpaint are at the very top of their game, showcasing a full understanding of their sound and the tools needed to get the best out of it.
Though the fever-dream beauty of their previous album is missed sometimes, Warpaint sound so excited to be making music on Heads Up that the feeling can't help but be contagious.
Heads Up is a strong, evocative record that solidifies Warpaint as one of the genre’s most creative and entertaining. Whatever that genre is, however, is still up for debate. With a delectable mix of R&B, hip-hop, rock, and pop, Warpaint remain satisfyingly undefinable.
Heads Up is the sound of a fully confident and mature band that has no qualms challenging themselves.
‘Heads Up’ represents the next measured step in the band’s plans for eventual chart domination. It’s the kind of record that’ll make you reach for the hairbrush microphone and throw some seriously diva-like shapes at the bathroom mirror.
Never before has the group’s vocal interplay sounded so lush, so implausibly otherworldly, while Stella Mozgawa’s beats have grown into combustible walls of polyrhythms, meaning that this is the Warpaint’s most danceable, most tactile record to date.
Their third full length brings out the inchoate danceability in their sound more than ever, steeped in the band's recent R&B and hip-hop listening.
Warpaint are nothing if not ambitious, which is doubly proved on Heads Up. Sometimes this makes for delicious moments ... But other times the band is operating in too many directions at once.
Heads Up leans more heavily in a pop direction, veering ever closer to the tuneful but overly polite hum of acts like Coldplay.
The band deserves credit for expanding their sonic palette through synths, electronic drums and other production booth chicanery, and for exploring what they call a more “mature” Warpaint sound. Unfortunately, though, all this comes at the cost of believability, immediacy, and emotional depth.
The things the band does right on this album make it worth checking out, but hopefully next time around Warpaint will be able to keep the songwriting as consistently great throughout as the beginning and ending songs.
Heads Up feels like an album bound to be forgotten.
Seriously having fun with this one, hook after hook
Favourite songs:
1. Above Control
2. White Out
3. New Song
4. By Your Side
5. Heads Up
I've always liked when along the discography of a band we can appreciate the evolution of the musicians. In Heads Up we find tremendously elaborated drums, bass lines that hold harmonically all the songs and that add to a lot of groove, guitars with dreamy sounds and perfectly harmonized voices in tunes with very interesting song structures.
The band moves away from the softness of their latest album and projects more energy than on any other previous release. In Heads Up Warpaint delivered a ... read more
Quitando algunas canciones en exceso lentas y a las cuales no les encuentro la gracias ("Today Dear", "Don´t Let Go"), las demas canciones son exquisitas. Lo pondría como el disco mas flojo.
1 | Whiteout 4:42 | 85 |
2 | By Your Side 4:32 | 85 |
3 | New Song 4:16 | 93 |
4 | The Stall 4:55 | 85 |
5 | So Good 5:59 | 82 |
6 | Don't Wanna 3:42 | 85 |
7 | Don't Let Go 4:21 | 80 |
8 | Dre 3:58 | 82 |
9 | Heads Up 4:57 | 83 |
10 | Above Control 5:05 | 90 |
11 | Today Dear 4:49 | 80 |
#27 | / | Earbuddy |
#30 | / | LA Music Blog |
#32 | / | BLARE |
#38 | / | Loud and Quiet |
#39 | / | American Songwriter |
#61 | / | Crack Magazine |
#63 | / | Fopp |
#71 | / | Under the Radar |
#88 | / | Piccadilly Records |
#96 | / | Rough Trade |