A promising, impassioned debut.
Tim Lee
It's a brilliant show, from a brilliant band, doing brilliant things.
Enough ennui to scare a French philosopher.
Admirable, but lacking personality.
Calvi proves she's no one-trick pony on this triumph of a second record.
Sometimes gloriously messy, sometimes just simply glorious.
A definite step in a positive direction.
The common thread throughout, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Danilova's voice.
Austra would be better, in live mode at least, if they were just a little bit more mysterious.
A bit warmer, a bit lusher and a bit less lonely.
'From The Hills Below The City' is quite a sunny album. But quite sunny won't set your hair on fire.
A simply great album.
Individually these would be two good albums. But as a complimentary pair they become much more.
'English Little League', like many of its GBV brethren, is a scattergun, busy thing, full of ideas but with a tendency to leave some of them as skeletal as an atopic squirrel.
In many ways, it's not awful. Except lyrically. Lyrically it is definitely awful.
Fragile, beautiful and more than a little bit strange.
For all the vast amounts of atmosphere it creates, nothing much happens.
Somewhere 'betwixt Alex Turner's skilful vignettes, Pulp's skilful vignettes and well, Morrissey's skilful vignettes. Basically, there's a lot of vignetting.
For all the odd moments where it clicks, the overriding impression this album gives is one of a band going through the motions.
Her recklessness momentum is forever tinged with a hint of shyness.
An album that makes you long for a beard, a porch, a shotgun and the onset of dusk.
It's a dark and contemplative morning after the night before for the band's fifteenth.
A stark, sparse, brief lament through troubles. Of the heart, the soul, and the sea.
Ragged, romantic and tremendously exciting.
