Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We find Poe on her second album brazen and boundlessly inspired, flexing her creative range with more quality ideas than can possibly be crammed into seventeen songs and a half-dozen genres. I read an interview on how this amazing disc came about. Finding herself at a loose end creatively after her first album, Poe describes an unsettling dream where her late father mysteriously urges her to "find his voice". Some time later she unearthed a forgotten box of family tapes dating from early childhood, featuring a revelatory array of personal voice recordings by none other than her often remote and complex Dad. Confronting the material wasn't easy at first. Then "suddenly I had 700 songs I needed to write, all of them at my fingertips". Talk of a concept album alarmed her backers, who suggested she "capitalize on her fan base" instead. Undaunted, Poe withdrew to a private studio and cozied up with her ProTools digital audio workstation, throwing 12-16 hours a day into the quintessential labor of love. Excluding all but an inner circle of accomplices, emerging two years and fifteen filled hard drives later with this incandescent work. And these songs!! Opulent and gripping, cohesive yet intricate, gloriously melodic, expansive, diverse. Up volume and sit back. Wade that first chilling intro into the heady rush of "Haunted" and I guarantee your pulse and breathing will have noticeably increased. Yes, the headlining "Hey Pretty" is a stunner, but I soon found it more of a bonus track alongside even more precocious siblings, "Control", "Terrible Thought", "Walk The Walk", "Wild", "5½ Minute Hallway"...on down the track list.. Each a consummate short story of it's own, with barely a mediocre moment anywhere. Songs intensely layered and multifaceted, yet always the sense of Poe in absolute command of her vision. Hard-as-nails guitar riffs blending to irresistible psychedeliscapes, shimmering codas, aching harmonies so fleeting I want to start throwing things. Startling detail, ravishing orchestration, that unbearably expressive voice warm and fragile and savage like the most ardent lover. There is a superb muscularity in Poe's music and especially her singing, a fusion of recklessness and control that sends shivers, puts a twist in your tummy and keeps you coming back for more. Why didn't we need lyrics with the documentation? Because every word is perfectly distinct. And if you miss one you will need to start again. To heighten the impact, Poe interweaves her father's disembodied voice with other soul-stirring memorabilia throughout, a mosaic of enthralling vignettes around his pervasive ghost. Unraveling with us a child's love, terror and loss, and things left unsaid, the captivating story never self-indulgent, accommodates us all. Elsewhere flash-forward; the enduring woman, compassionate but uncompromising, aware yet still vulnerable, challenging, unapologetically sexual. I have a feeling Poe's fan base is doing just fine. Against the best advice, she has pulled off an epic, timeless classic that stamps her unmistakable authority as an artist of great communicative power. She's also really, really good.