Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Entertainment Weekly | C |
| The Independent | (unfavorable) |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Spin | (6/10) |
Writing for Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis gave the album a star rating of four out of five stars. He said that the band's second album develops the sounds of August and Everything After and that they "largely achieve their serious ambitions". He praised Adam Duritz' lyrics and called the album "deeply satisfying".
In a review for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album a rating of four stars out of five. He called it a "self-consciously challenging response" to their successful debut album. He described the songs as "slightly more somber" than those on the first album but "more affecting". He noted an occasional "pretentiousness" on the album but praised "A Long December" as particularly articulate.
Andy Gill from The Independent gave the album a more negative review. He criticized Duritz' song-writing as "self-pity" and called him a "classic solipsistic soul-barer, he just won't shut up about himself". He called the album "bland" with "obvious" influences (including R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen and Lynyrd Skynyrd). Gill had some praise for producer Gil Norton's work on the album.
In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker also had negative feelings about the album, and gave it a "C" grade. He criticized Duritz' "yowling" and "moans" and called Counting Crows a "pastiche of its influences".
Read more about this topic: Recovering The Satellites
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)
“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)