- Critic score
- Publication
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Aug 29, 2016This offers more of the detailed scenes only Ocean can script, as well as some stray sly quotables. Ultimately, it's a smartly ordered patchwork of mostly secondary material.
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Aug 22, 2016Time might have pushed along, but it was obvious how much Ocean’s rich, detailed, and urgent storytelling had been missed once it was here again.
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Aug 22, 2016While Endless makes its visual implications clear, the whopping 18 tracks that soundtrack it muddle his intent.
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Sep 1, 2016Divorced from the accompanying visuals, the exercise proves less engaging overall. In context, however, it is legitimately hypnotic and soothing, as if Bob Ross was reincarnated with woodwork on the brain.
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Aug 22, 2016The lyrics are vivid and occasionally rote in their romanticism, but the formlessness of Endless is deceptive.
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Aug 24, 201646 minutes of music that plays like a mixtape, sliding from song to song, demo to demo, like scrolling through Frank’s hard drive of unreleased material. It’s an intriguing peek into his process, and it contains some of the rawest vocal takes he’s ever put out.
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Aug 22, 2016Like Wilson before him, Ocean has delivered a non-commercial pop curio that now and then slows down to focus on an idea long enough to form a “complete” song, or not.
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Q MagazineSep 23, 2016These records might not eclipse Channel Orange, but they have their own mercurial gleam, mapping the spaces between people, reaching for a hazy intimacy that almost feels real. [Nov 2016, p.112]
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Aug 25, 2016For the most part, the musicality--much sparser than the maximalist sonic feasts of his earlier work--still holds the same synesthetic power of the past, even for those who don’t claim to have the ability to see sounds.
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Aug 19, 2016A rich, varied and – at times – challenging musical feast.
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Aug 29, 2016[Endless and Blond(e)] are great--but they require time and, realistically, a step-back from the extraordinary (and sometimes ludicrous) hype that necessitates Ocean’s new works be either masterpieces or a complete let-down.
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UncutSep 23, 2016The Mood is subdued but cavalier, more of a mixtape. [Nov 2016, p.24]
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Sep 16, 2016When the workers step into another room, suit up, and begin spray painting the boxes, the music takes on a more soothing, droning, electronic quality with distinctly ripping synths and chirping, muted background vocals. In short: the music finally becomes strong enough to make these unimaginably boring visuals watchable. Sadly that beautifully soundtracked spray painting sequence ends all too soon.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 242 out of 261
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Mixed: 5 out of 261
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Negative: 14 out of 261
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Aug 19, 2016
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Aug 21, 2016
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Aug 19, 2016