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Little Heart's Ease Image
Metascore
71

Generally favorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The Toronto lo-fi indie-rockers, led by Will Oldham-esque singer-songwriter Aaron Riches, make their Sanctuary debut with this third album.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 9
  2. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. A powerfully emotional and poignant album that reclaims the American spiritual from the depths of the irrelevant past and rewrites it for the post-modern age.
  2. Riches' voice can still sound a bit flat on some tracks, but his vocal and lyrical abilities have grown by leaps and bounds.
  3. Little Heart's Ease does deliver more of the dark but oddly jaunty songwriting that made Royal City's previous album noteworthy.
  4. For the first time it sounds like Royal City is stuck.
  5. Royal City don't have the arresting lyrics or delivery of the best Palace songs, nor is Little Heart's Ease the equal of genre-champ Magnolia Electric Company, but, as Riches might put it, there's some sparkles in the rough.
  6. Little Heart's Ease is a respectable effort - just not by Royal City standards.
  7. Too often, the new record substitutes weighty, Biblical language for true heft.

See all 9 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. David_
    Aug 5, 2004
    7
    The first three tracks are great, as are some of the other songs... but something's not quite right.