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Mar 7, 2013An album where the reminiscence of rock is revitalized by The Men’s gift of genre hybridization.
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Mar 20, 2013On New Moon they take a wide range of sounds and somehow make them all their own, and if you can keep up with all the "genre-hopping," this is certain to be one of the most unique and interesting records you'll hear this year.
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MagnetMar 15, 2013They take genre conventions and flip them inside out. [No. 96, p.57]
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Mar 5, 2013Sacrificing recklessness is different from sacrificing passion, and New Moon cements The Men as one of the most exciting rock acts today, no matter who they’re listening to or, most importantly, who they’re redefining.
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May 30, 2013It'll evoke memories of Wilco's Being There ("Open the Door"), GNR around Lies ("The Seeds"), and Neil Young doing "Big Time" ("Freaky").
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Mar 6, 2013New Moon is their most purposeful beast yet.
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Mar 13, 2013New Moon has extended the the group’s realization of their own freedom.
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Mar 5, 2013The Men cover a lot of ground on New Moon, with consistently solid returns.
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Mar 5, 2013For now, though, New Moon stands as it is: a homey, gut-warming batch of tunes that erratically juggle nostalgia, craft, and ass-kicking abandon.
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Mar 8, 2013New Moon follows through on that promise but inevitably discovers that, when you do open your heart, blood gets spilled.
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Apr 23, 2013The Men almost casually demonstrate a mastery of song-based rock & roll that usually comes from decades of work.
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Kerrang!Apr 5, 2013If the music The men are making is punk, it's rarely sounded so awesome. [2 Mar 2013, p.51]
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Mar 26, 2013New Moon is an exciting, challenging and rewarding listen.
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Mar 19, 2013New Moon offers pleasures aplenty.
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Mar 18, 2013The Men may not be here to change rock history but at the very least they deserve serious recognition for the fact that they keep doing exactly what they want, and that it continues to be as honest and as shamelessly exhilarating as the best rock music always should be.
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Mar 6, 2013New Moon is one of those excellent albums that’s going to divide opinion, especially among long-standing fans of the band.
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Mar 4, 2013Fortunately for fans of their punishing past, New Moon smoothes out the edges without getting rid of them completely, leaving just enough rough patches here and there to remind listeners that there's still plenty of muscle hiding just below their languid façade.
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Mar 4, 2013The place where the anthemic, the noisy and the epic meet is where The Men sound most naturally positioned.
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Mar 4, 2013New Moon is a rare and very special album.
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Mar 4, 2013New Moon is simply a more casual affair by The Men, a perfectly passable rock record by a band with the talent to pull that off and without the anxiety that you’ll want to pay attention.
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Apr 5, 2013New Moon feels a little bit long; though only twelve songs, they are all pretty substantial (especially the eight-minute “Supermoon”), and things lag a little between “The Brass” and “I See No One.”
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Under The RadarMar 22, 2013It may not grab quite like Open Your Heart, but New Moon is still an unabashedly enjoyable testament to the band's talent. [Mar-Apr 2013, p.94]
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Mar 18, 2013New Moon reminds you that the Men can go pretty much anywhere they please.
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Mar 5, 2013Overdriven, overblown and utterly exciting, it might be nothing new, but it’s a thunderous reminder as to why rock is so enduring.
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Mar 5, 2013The Men have simply absorbed another musical language and are trying to speak through it and the other languages they’ve spoken through on previous albums, trading Spacemen 3 or The Buzzcocks for Dusty Springfield (“Freaky”). Some don’t work (“Saw Her Face,” parts of “Half Angel Half Light”), some do really well (“The Brass,” “Electric”).
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Mar 4, 2013New Moon shows The Men, who have always been admired for their ability to pull such diverse influences but held back for their lack of originality, expanding their horizons and coming into their own.
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Mar 13, 2013One can make out here and there traces of American roots music, but those are alas, buried within the breathtaking bluster, ’cos ultimately, you can’t separate The Men from the noise.
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MojoApr 10, 2013Tracks like Half Angel Half Light suggest the passion remains fully intact. [May 2013, p.96]
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Q MagazineMar 12, 2013The first few tracks feel like a positive transformation into sharper songcraft, but when New Moon latter half descends to the noisemongery of yore, right down to Freaky's flat-out Dinosaur Jr.-ism, one does have to ask: will the real Men please stand up? [Apr 2013, p.107]
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Mar 7, 2013While the album could’ve benefited from the trim of a song or two, it successfully avoids the dreaded career stagnation.
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Mar 6, 2013Smoothing an epochal shift with a sonic mix of new and old isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Arguably, the band did the same thing when it cast aside the spacey sounds of Leave Home for the alt-leaning Open Your Heart. But on New Moon, the transition is rocky, more of a cop-out than a compromise.
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Mar 4, 2013New Moon contains a handful of good songs, just like The Men’s prior two albums for Sacred Bones. The main difference here is that the stellar tracks aren’t embedded amongst thrilling instrumentals.
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UncutMar 1, 2013Cohesion, The Men have clearly decided, is not their bag. [Apr 2013, p.73]
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Mar 6, 2013New Moon is at times quite captivating and as rowdy as you need it to be, but its weaker moments consistently outshine its brighter ones, leaving the listener with an album half-full of both indelible sonic fury and equally forgettable missteps.
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Mar 1, 2013The high points find the Men melding their overmodulated past with their new melodic obsessions. The low points render the band mere pretenders to outfits like Guided By Voices and Spoon. [Apr 2013, p.90]
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Mar 1, 2013With some clear-minded editing, a workable pair of EPs could have been forged from New Moon. As it is, the cumulative effect of lumping so many competing ideas together is a mess. A frustratingly muddled mess.
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Mar 1, 2013Whenever the Men establish any semblance of momentum, they quickly squander it.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 10
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Mixed: 1 out of 10
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Negative: 0 out of 10
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Mar 5, 2013
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Mar 7, 2013