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Dec 9, 2014Shifting perspectives and clever juxtapositions are all over this album, Middleton and Shrigley have created an album that on the face of it appears to be simple, but there’s untold depth here, as well as some endlessly creative swearing.
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Dec 12, 2014Through it all, Middleton somehow locates the appropriate settings for Shrigley’s perverse poems (or is it the other way round?) with charging techno pulses animating the hysterical protests of a teenager appalled at the vandal antics of a “Houseguest”, and chuntering stomp-beats illustrating the grotesque primitivism of a homicidal “Caveman.”
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Jan 20, 2015A bizarre little record, Music And Words was seemingly kicked off in 2007. With a seven-year gestation, it would be nigh on impossible to maintain a full sense of coherency, but the twin artists just about manage it.
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MojoDec 17, 2014It doesn't all gel, but the hits-to-duds ratio is high. [Jan 2015, p.94]
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Dec 15, 2014The album works because the two men, both fortysomething and either born Scottish (Middleton) or Glasgow School of Art-educated (Shrigley), share a puerile, misanthropic simpatico and a rinky-dink, borderline outsider approach to their art, in which social niceties are frequently torched.
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Dec 9, 2014Shrigley’s work is not for everyone, and Middleton has only a cult following; while Words And Music won’t change either of those facts, the prospect of someone stumbling across this record by mistake makes it more than a worthwhile endeavour.
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Dec 9, 2014Turner prize-nominee Shrigley’s misanthropic worldview-- murderous cavemen, sadistic houseguests and monkeys eating their offspring are among the topics covered--is present and correct, although not everything here benefits from the surreal linguistic twists of his solo work. When he does catch you off guard, it’s splendid stuff.
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UncutDec 9, 2014An amusing curio, although you're unlikely to listen to it more than once. [Jan 2015, p.75]
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Q MagazineDec 16, 2014Shrigley's humour quickly suffers from the law of diminishing returns; once the initial shock has dissipated, it fails to stand up to repeated listening. [Jan 2015, p.128]