Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
incredible original sound, 25 Mar 2003
For those of you who don't know much about the books, they are basically two guys, one who plays folky acoustic guitar, and the other who does samples. It sounds like an odd combination, but it works really well, I'm not really into folk, so don't let that description put you off, but I don't know how else to describe it. It is a very difficult album to describe, but in some ways that makes it better - it is just a superbly innovative album. Many of the samples they use come from films and include strange dialougue and speech. The songs have good beats too, shifting, stop-start kind of beats, and everything pulls together brilliantly. This all makes for a fantastically interesting and incredibly orginal and innovative sound. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in music as an art form.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My new favourite band, 4 Aug 2005
By A Customer
I first heard this band during a Brian Eno interview a few weeks ago, on the strength of that I got this album, and since first hearing that they've become my favourite band. I can't quite pin it down, but somehow this CD restores my faith in music, nay life! It reminds me of going for stoned nightwalks with my brother, of getting excited about hearing amazing new music on the John Peel show in the 80's, of the evocative power of found sound. There's a great warmth to this recording, and a wonderful sense of humour. And though it may seem chaotic at times, compositionally it has a wonderful organic flow - I read somewhere one of the guys describe the way the tracks are structured as somewhat akin to a jellyfish - in that if you look at a jellyfish it seems like it can't possibly "work" - but somehow it does - and beautifully so.
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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Promising but frustrating, 23 Feb 2005
One of the most strangely overrated albums of recent memory, the release of Food for Thought brought such gushing press reaction that it certainly seemed worth the gamble. A low-key blend of manipulated found sound (people laughing, gates squeaking shut, sampled voices), cut 'n' spliced acoustic guitar, banjo and violin, and smatterings of murmured singing - it all looks very nice on paper. However, it is either jarringly erratic - downing one enjoyable motif to take an unwelcome sojourn on the banjo - or wholly insubstantial, with songs either going nowhere or plodding into nothingness. The use of found sound and spectral, disembodied voices in not unusual, but there is something strangely quirky and calming about this album that can lay claim to authenticity. One track rustles and floats with sampled laughter, and brings a smile to the listener's face, while 'Read, Eat, Sleep' lulls you sleep with its samples from a spelling bee competition. Like Animal Collective's later Sung Tongs, it has a charmingly playful rusticity, but unlike that band The Books never build on their successes, having a tendency to allow things to deconstruct or implode. 'Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again' opens brilliantly with its looped guitar plucks and deranged voices but, just when it hits a peak, makes an unwelcome detour down a country road (an annoying tangent of banjo and violin that throws the track completely off course). Food for Thought could also be compared to some to the folktronic artists (see Four Tet) but somehow doesn't belong to that 'genre', sharing its atmosphere even with some of Mogwai's quieter acoustic moments on 'Come on Die Young'.
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