Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 78/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| The Guardian | |
| The Independent | |
| NME | 6/10 |
| The Observer | |
| Pitchfork Media | 4.6/10 |
| PopMatters | 8/10 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| The Times | |
Seventh Tree received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 78, based on 32 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". John Murphy of musicOMH called it Goldfrapp's "most subtle, affecting and rewarding album to date" and compared it to albums by Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins. In a review for Allmusic, Heather Phares wrote that the album's "electro hippie-chic is the duo's most polished and luxe work yet" and named "Caravan Girl" as its best song. However, Pitchfork Media reviewer Nate Patrin was less impressed, and wrote that the album is "so subtle and slow-moving it doesn't seem to go anywhere" and that its songs "coast on some frothy sense of pleasantness that evaporates the moment end". Adam Webb of Yahoo! Music wrote that Seventh Tree "marks convincing evidence that Alison Goldfrapp now exists on the same artistic plane as PJ Harvey or Kate Bush". Rolling Stone's Christian Hoard said that the "slow pace can be a snooze", but that the album "still makes for good post-party chill-out music". John Lewis of Uncut called it "brave, bonkers, often beautiful, sometimes haunting and occasionally ridiculous".
Q magazine ranked the album at number nineteen on its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2008. PopMatters placed it at number fifty-four on its list of The Best Albums of 2008. Ben Rayner of the Toronto Star included the album on his list of "rock music that stuck in 2008".
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