SPIN

5

• SPIN Rating:5 of 10

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Release Date: October 12, 2010
Label: The End

Damon Gough's seventh album tacitly acknowledges the artistically lost decade that the English singer-songwriter has endured since his shambolic, charming debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeest (which won 2000's Mercury Prize). The simultaneously overblown and underwritten orchestral pomp of his past few records has been curbed in favor of fragile fingerpicked acoustics, tinny drum machines, and a cozy haze of reverb. Problem is, his return to more intimate recording can't conceal that there's nary a melody worth savoring amid the autumnal folkiness.