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- Critic score
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Q MagazineOct 12, 2012The overall effect is not dissimilar to a less arch Rufus Wainwright, although the quality of songs does tail off slightly toward the end. [Jul 2012, p.113]
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UncutJun 1, 2012Watson is a master of both dynamics and arrangements, his songs ebbing and flowing with a restrained grace and striking sensitivity. [Jul 2012, p.85]
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May 11, 2012Surely the best album (so far) of 2012.
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May 11, 2012Adventures in Your Own Backyard is a frankly exquisite, elegantly crafted gem.
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May 3, 2012While Adventures In Your Own Backyard can't be described as instantly catchy, its songs wend their way into your memory as if you've always known them.
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May 3, 2012The entire album has such a beautiful richness to it that it's mind-boggling to discover that it was all recorded in the singer's Montreal apartment--although you can hear the creaking of floorboards and chairs throughout, which only adds to the album's charm and comfort.
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May 3, 2012Listeners willing to devote an hour--rather than a rushed five-minute scan of the first 30 seconds of each cut--to this unassuming little gem will likely want to revisit it again and again.
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May 1, 2012All are decent enough but, when placed alongside the album's standout moments, they aren't quite as dazzling. Not like that really matters though, because there are standouts throughout.
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Apr 30, 2012Adventures... is an accomplished album, one which makes the most out of not over-complicating things.
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Apr 30, 2012Melancholic and joyful, it's both soft and harsh, but more impressive than any contradiction is the gorgeous use of timbre that takes over from the word go. A wonderfully simple, elegantly performed album that puts the importance of texture into perspective.
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May 3, 2012There's simply a gentle swing to Watson's woeful, unavoidably Buckley-esque warble, containing an epic elegance worthy of the most intimate of adventures.
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Oct 9, 2012Adventures finds Watson's broad cinematic swaths bundled into a persistently intimate experience.
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MojoJul 18, 2012The songs are rarely more than threads of querulous melody and floaty notions. [Jun 2012, p.93]
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MagnetMay 30, 2012Decidedly pleasant. [No.87 p.60]
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May 30, 2012There's a permeating feeling that if you've heard one Patrick Watson album, you have heard them all, even if Adventures in Your Own Backyard offers some subtleties and a slight change in approach and forebodingness. Still, it is enjoyable on its own terms.
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Apr 30, 2012Combining moments of instrumental grandeur with sections so stripped-back they verge on silence, Watson delivers the perfect summer evening soundtrack.
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Apr 30, 2012It's pretty stuff, with breathtaking production which doesn't quite conceal a shortage of strong songs. The spine-tingling anthem Quiet Crowd is the exception, Watson's butterfly vocal darting around lines about "lovers and liars" and wrongs in dangerous places.
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May 16, 2012Adventures in Your Own Backyard is about as confirmatory of an artist's status quo as an album can be; it takes Watson's style in no new directions, preferring instead to bask in its own childlike exuberance and to demonstrate all the trappings of ambition but little in the way of earning it.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 12
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Mixed: 1 out of 12
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Negative: 0 out of 12
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Oct 24, 2014
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Jun 26, 2012