Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Dusted Magazine | (no rating) |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.6/10) |
| Stylus | (B+) |
In his Stylus review, music critic Stewart Voegtlin compares the "old" and "new" Fahey, and cited "the most striking music" as those tracks from Georgia Stomps" which provided Fahey "the chance to maintain his moving target status, eschewing big-bodied acoustic for shimmering electric." Regarding the tracks from Womblife, "It doesn’t always work: one often strains to hear the guitar over the invasive din." Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues sounds "...like the “old” Fahey: forlorn, ruminative, down on his luck. There was never really Old or New John. New John was always Old; the Old was always presented in brand New ways. So, raise a glass to neither: John was always at his best with a leg hanging over either side of the fence."
Critic Derek Taylor summed up the compilation writing "Those seeking the virtuosic Fahey of albums like God, Time and Causality will find him largely absent here, but the trade-off comes in a haunting set of performances that can swallow the listener whole, much like the ancient marine life named in the collection’s cryptic title."
Mark Masters, writing for Pitchfork Media referred to Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues as an "afterthought", but also "...in its own small way, it's perfect, filled with the kind of labyrinthine figures, ringing tones, and deft shifts that mark Fahey's best work." and summarizes the compilation as Fahey "... to abandon his fickle muse even this late in life, making Sea Changes and Coelacanths a vital curve in the winding path left by his staggering oeuvre."
Read more about this topic: Sea Changes & Coelacanths: A Young Person's Guide To John Fahey
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)