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The results are alternately ghostly, sexy, and nocturnal, but they’re always moving.
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Holly Miranda makes nice music, sometimes really pretty, but it doesn’t say anything real or move emotions to anywhere even nearing an extreme. As a result The Magician's Private Library fails to tick that most important box: evocative.
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It’s ambitious for a debut, and for the most part Miranda is able to keep up.
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Miranda has a bright, dexterous voice and writes smart songs about romantic strife and rapture. But too often here, she disappears under pretty keyboard textures and brass.
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It's impossible to say how much Miranda is responsible for the shimmering, luxuriant music on this album, and how much was conjured up by her magician of a producer, TVOR mastermind Dave Sitek. What is certain is that it's the music that is of dramatic, hypnotic interest here.
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UncutFears that Sitek's heavy hand will smother Miranda's songs, though, are largely dispelled. [Mar 2010, p.88]
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FilterThe ruminative, skittering TVOTR rhythmic patterns distract from Miranda's strengths even with the occasional injections of some easy-breezy horn lines or soul-jazz keys. [Winter 2010, p.100]
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As it stands, The Magician’s Private Library is an anemic batch of songs that drifts by in a blur - albeit a rich, multi-hued blur.