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Knitting Needles And Bicycle Bells Image
Metascore
71

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: This is the debut LP for the new project from Chris Lopez (Rock*A*Teens).
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 12
  2. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is the 2005 American indie rock equivalent of the kind of records the Kinks were making in the Village Green era: parochial, intimate, painfully literate, and pretty close to brilliant.
  2. Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is a near perfect collection of four-minute songs that recall a more ragged XTC, the skewed pop/rock style of The Kinks, and The White Album-era Beatles.
  3. While the best tracks are the most uneasy and strung-out - like when bearing the deranged, astral colors of the Of Montreal kin, “Marry Me” or relishing the fabulous debauchery of the Pixieish devil’s waltz, “My Wicked Wicked Ways” - it can never be denied how honestly happy Lopez sounds on Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells.
  4. Blender
    70
    [Lopez's] wry lyrics and melodic flights lend the disc unexpectedly sharp, stirring edges. [Nov 2005, p.141]
  5. Poppy and breezy to the point of being nauseating.
  6. It sounds like good musicians doing a rush job, kind of like Blood on the Tracks without the spellbinding genius.
  7. Under The Radar
    40
    While this music may get heads bobbing live, it comes off flat on disc. [#11, p.116]

See all 12 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. ReggieD
    Sep 18, 2005
    8
    What this album does is sink: and what is sinking is teeth into the grindstone. Where ABBA and their followers have failed, they pick up and What this album does is sink: and what is sinking is teeth into the grindstone. Where ABBA and their followers have failed, they pick up and drop the tiniest nuances fit to squirm their way into the middle of the world. Wrecked? Yeah, maybe their equipment, but when an album comes along that can shake the very hound you sleep on, you dont look away twice. Everybody will cry when they die. Expand