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Sep 6, 2011Throughout, Fool's Gold lollop along confidently, Top's husky croon offset by Lewis Pesacov's guitar lines, like dewy spider's web.
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Sep 6, 2011Throughout, Fool's Gold lollop along confidently, Top's husky croon offset by Lewis Pesacov's guitar lines, like dewy spider's web.
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UncutAug 18, 2011These 10 supple, radiant songs blur the boundaries between African pop an funky American new wave with the same glorious ease as Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues. [Sep 2011, p.84]
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Sep 12, 2011Refined into a quintet after two years of touring, the band broadens its appeal on Leave No Trace, threading the needle between the Sahara and the synth-heavy romanticism of 1980s New Wave.
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Sep 2, 2011Leave No Trace favours synths over horns – in fact, it's not until about ten minutes in that we get our first taste of brass - and whilst the sound is still impressively full-bodied, without the continuous stream of interwoven saxophone and trumpet solos that made its predecessor such a joyous affair it feels pretty empty in comparison.
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Aug 18, 2011Leave No Trace exemplifies Fool's Gold's versatility, a trend that will hopefully continue on future albums.
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Aug 17, 2011Maybe Vampire Weekend is African-inspired indie rock and Fool's Gold is indie rock-inspired Afro-pop, but it's hard to deny their similarities.
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Aug 17, 2011The result is a joyous and soulful collection of summery pop songs and urgent sun-drenched ditties that grow with you over time.
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Aug 24, 2011There's a lot more discipline present on the band's second album, Leave No Trace, but it's not clear if that's an encouraging development.
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Aug 17, 2011Fool's Gold knot their songs up in Lewis Pesacov's elastic guitar, and when they let it go-as in the closing moments of "Bark & Bite"-everything unwinds into bliss.
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Aug 22, 2011In other words, Fool's Gold made a Foreign Born record.
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Aug 30, 2011Akin to their debut, Fool's Gold have a habit of fizzling like a caffeine rush half-way through, the once-crystalline pop teetering on rustic in its redundancy.
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Aug 19, 2011Open-mindedness and a change of approach is often laudable but, in this case, it has resulted in an album that, whilst entirely pleasant and enjoyable, is far less adventurous.
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Aug 19, 2011It's hard not to wish Fool's Gold had figured out how to develop and expand their approach without compromising so much of what made their debut so delightfully unique.
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Aug 17, 2011Though still sunny and hooky, Leave No Trace lacks the enigmatic spark of its predecessor, especially now that the words are more readily understandable.
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Q MagazineAug 16, 2011Los Angeleans' Paul Simon-channelling second LP. [Sept. 2011, p. 110]
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Aug 16, 2011With the debut, the main argument against Fool's Gold seemed to be that they were appropriating too much African influence, sounds they didn't have a right to, into what was primarily pop. With Leave No Trace, I'd say they've gone too far the other way, eliminating the eccentricities and exoticisms that made them interesting.
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Aug 25, 2011Leave No Trace is an enjoyable time, but the party peaks early.
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Oct 27, 2011Even the sax, which on the debut could unexpectedly tickle your ears right when you thought the band had run out of hooks, sounds like it's here through obligation. And while Top's singing is still committed, it's less buoyant and less assured.
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Sep 15, 2011Not once does this record manage to clamber out of its self-imposed constraints of mediocrity; and for a band genuinely capable of blissful set piece tracks, that makes it mostly a somewhat distressing token.
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Aug 16, 2011The most surprising letdown, though, is vocalist Luke Top's decision to sing mainly in English, which only serves to highlight his shortcomings as a lyricist and emphasize an unfortunate nasal quality that didn't seem nearly as annoying in Hebrew.