Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
| Entertainment Weekly | (A) |
| NME | (6/10) |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.4/10) |
| PopMatters | (favorable) |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Spin | (8/10) |
| Stylus Magazine | D+ |
| Uncut | |
Mass Romantic was well received in Canada, where it won a Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. The album received generally favorable reviews on its initial release. Allmusic awarded the album four and a half stars out of five, describing the album as one "that reveals its charms through repeat listens, and makes a listener wonder how the band can master so many different musical styles via so many vocalists while still maintaining a fiercely cohesive sound." Entertainment Weekly gave them album an A rating, proclaiming it "An insanely contagious concoction of new wave, Cheap Trick, and garage-glam pandemonium, Romantic is a perfect pop album." PopMatters also spoke positively of the album, stating that the New Pornographers "have made such a great album, tuneful, overdosed with hooks, that all the past sins of our Northern neighbors are forgiven. Well, maybe not Rush, but close."
The Alternative Press gave the album a rating of four out of five, referring to it as a "masterful reproduction of underground power pop ca. 1979, complete with cheesy synths and slashing guitar leads". The Austin Chronicle awarded the album three and a half stars out of five stating "Mass Romantic is the type of album nobody makes anymore. It's an intricate and brightly colored gem, filled with sing-along melodies and sounds that shouldn't work together yet do." Rolling Stone gave the album three and a half stars out of five, stating "they've made a striking power-pop album, forty staggeringly catchy minutes of four-part harmonies and Wall of Sound production, exploding with energy and joy". In the United Kingdom, the album received slightly more mixed reviews, with a four out of five star rating from Uncut, but more average three out of five ratings from Q and the NME. The most negative review came from Stylus Magazine, giving the album a D+ rating, stating that "Too many misdirected ideas weigh this album down".
The album charted in several best of the year lists from various critics. Pitchfork Media rated it the ninth best album of 2001, stating, "Energetic, smooth, and masterfully executed, Mass Romantic is the catchiest thing to come out in ages." The site later placed Mass Romantic at number 91 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s. Magnet magazine included the album in its "20 Best Albums of 2001" list. In Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critic's poll of 2001, the album placed at number seventeen. In December 2007, Blender listed Mass Romantic as the 24th best indie rock album of all time. It is the second-highest Canadian album on the list behind Arcade Fire's Funeral, which was selected as the 6th best.
Read more about this topic: Mass Romantic
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“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)