Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Jun 5, 2013With Personal Record, Eleanor commits even more strongly to straightforward, sentimental, and concise songcraft.
-
Jun 11, 2013In Personal Record, Eleanor Friedberger has delivered on every promise she’s ever made with her music, and come up with an ever-unfolding, fully-realised gem.
-
Jun 4, 2013If Last Summer shut the door on Friedberger’s former knack for erratic musicianship and off-the-cuff arrangements, Personal Record slides the bolt firmly in place.
-
Jun 5, 2013Despite Friedberger’s singular phrasing and voice, there’s something inviting and comfortingly familiar about Personal Record’s approach to pop melody.
-
Jul 3, 2013An album full of fresh twists and turns, musically and lyrically, and a song cycle full of melody and surprise.
-
MojoJun 17, 2013With unerring melodies, Eleanor F hits the sweet spot time after time. [Jul 2013, p.84]
-
UncutJun 6, 2013This follow-up is lighter still, housing Friedberger's gorgeous voice and diary-entry love songs within a freewheeling sound that bounces around the late '60s and '70s, looking for classic pop clues. [Jul 2013, p.75]
-
Jun 6, 2013Despite these retro touches, there’s something modern about the album’s ability to shrug off heartbreak, to grab victory from the jaws of defeat and then kick defeat in the jaw for being such a dick.
-
Jun 5, 2013Friedberger has always been a storyteller, but these tracks are rife with the kinds of details that breathe life into fiction, like white socks on a girl roller-skating down Market Street ("When I Knew"), and characters with names like Reggie and Peter ("I'll Never Be Happy Again").
-
Jun 4, 2013“My Own World” might as well be a microcosm of what Personal Record is as a whole as the best example of why the album works as well as it does, just quirky enough to stay true to Eleanor Friedberger’s one-of-a-kind perspective as an artist, while bringing you into her very own world more than ever before.
-
Jun 4, 2013Even if the album is more comforting than exciting, it's still an enjoyable portrait of Friedberger's artistry: warm, genuine and a little mischievous.
-
Jun 4, 2013It’s Friedberger’s lyrics and delivery that unite these various touchstones, as fresh and distinctive as ever, incredibly poignant and powerfully aware of her self and the signifiers that surround her.
-
Jun 21, 2013Personal Record doesn’t always have the focus and sense of place that made Last Summer great, but it’s pop music on a grander scale, both in sound and theme.
-
Jun 12, 2013Another summer album of frisky, playful, intelligent, tune-filled wonder from a great songwriter born to put a massive slobbering smile on yer face.
-
Jun 10, 2013The universal themes and her way to create tales that draw you in, make for an album that’s more emotionally resonant than her debut.
-
Jun 7, 2013A poster child for all things 1970s, Friedberger’s obsession with the decade colors the album with a breezy charm.
-
Jun 4, 2013Her second LP is full of crisp, jangly indie pop that can suggest Harry Nilsson or a bookish early Stones, and it's packed with stories of young people too mopey and absent-minded to realize the person across the bar is hitting on them.
-
Jun 4, 2013Broucek's analog approach gives each recording a warmth, and all of the separate instruments are given proper attention. Because of this and more, Personal Record is another fine entry in Eleanor Friedberger's career.
-
Jun 4, 2013A record that feels wonderfully askew, making Personal Record a challenge worth taking.
-
Jun 4, 2013While much of the record has one foot in 70s AM radio, Friedberger’s past cannot help but ensure that there’s an inquisitive, often eccentric worldview at the heart of each of these songs.
-
Jul 1, 2013What we have here is an album’s worth of incredibly passive, indifferent music-making.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 9 out of 11
-
Mixed: 2 out of 11
-
Negative: 0 out of 11
-
Dec 8, 2013
-
Jun 6, 2013