Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | 2003 |
| Blender | 2003 |
| Robert Christgau | link |
| Entertainment Weekly | A– 2003 |
| The Independent | 2003 |
| Pitchfork Media | 6.9/10 2003 |
| Rolling Stone | 2003 |
| RTÉ | 2003 |
| Slant | 2003 |
| Uncut | 2003 |
Overall, reception of the album was positive. Allmusic's Zac Johnson described the album as "another set of obscenely lush and opulent pop operettas... meticulously layered and richly textured, with full orchestral passages and many-throated harmonies". After praising the album, Johnson concluded that Wainwright "could be singing lists of names out of the phone book and it would still be more exciting and inventive than 99 percent of the other albums out there". Wainwright's style caused Sal Cinquemani of Slant to draw comparisons to a giant peacock's kaleidoscopic tail, and he insisted that producer Marius de Vries " the singer's opulent poperas and lush ballads in check while bringing them to a new level of lovely pageantry". Cinquemani also asserted that Want One had a "balanced mix of rollicking rock operas" and "quiet piano ballads".
Entertainment Weekly's Marc Weingarten characterized the album as a "gorgeous meditation on emotional displacement", with "clever, gently ironic wordplay". In his review for Rolling Stone, David Fricke called the album a record of "breathtaking, eccentric opulence" and a "loving nod to the vocal and poetic gifts he inherited from his parents", folk musicians Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle. Fricke concluded: "With the sumptuous honesty of Want One, their son is now his own man".
However, the album did receive some criticism, mostly pertaining to its lavish and decadent style. Blender's RJ Smith called Wainwright's "carnival-esque piano playing... so thick, the music all but drowns in pretty surfaces". The Independent mostly complimented Want One, though its review revealed a preference for the simpler tracks like "Want" and "Dinner at Eight", "when it's just him and his piano". The review also criticized "Movies of Myself", describing the song as having "plaintive vocals jar against stadium-rock guitars and dubious Eighties keyboards". Contrastingly, Pitchfork Media's review singles out "Vibrate", "Natasha", "Pretty Things", and "Want" for being "simply too sparse to offer any real substance".
Read more about this topic: Want One
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time.”
—A.P. (Sir Alan Patrick)
“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)