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Born Horses Image
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75

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: This is the first full-length of new songs from New York indie rock band Mercury Rev since 2015's The Light In You.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Sep 5, 2024
    80
    Another exciting addition to the long-running band’s catalog, Born Horses finds the Mercury Rev stretching out and evolving over 35 years into their career.
  2. The Wire
    Oct 22, 2024
    80
    Born Horses feels like a logical progression, the band’s luscious drift and bittersweet arrangements blossoming into widescreen vignettes of love, loss and revelation, but delivered with a poise and scale previously unseen. [oct 2024, p.58]
  3. Mojo
    Sep 5, 2024
    80
    Bands, as Donahue famously sang on Holes, “never work quite right”, but with this late-period beauty, Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly. [Oct 2024, p.83]
  4. Sep 9, 2024
    80
    Born Horses was a slow process – Donahue compares the patient approach to recognising the “statue already inside the marble” – but it has given rich rewards; a change in focus that remains unmistakably Mercury Rev. [Oct 2024, p.98]
  5. Sep 9, 2024
    80
    More grounded and yet more transporting than many of their later albums, Born Horses is ample proof that Mercury Rev are still making moving, thoughtful, exciting music -- and like most of their best albums, there's nothing else quite like it.
  6. Classic Rock Magazine
    Sep 5, 2024
    70
    A dream experience, Born Horses canters at a fine pace. [Sep 2024, p.75]
  7. Sep 10, 2024
    45
    Mercury Rev have created so many otherworldly symphonies in the past, but there’s very little of their previous ingenuity or vision on Born Horses. Everything shimmers and sparkles in roughly the same way, with very little to distinguish one song from the next.

See all 10 Critic Reviews