Loren Connors

Portrait of a Soul

2000

Alternative/Indie Rock

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Though unintended, this is a four-movement solo guitar suite cut in a French studio; it reveals the iconoclastic musician at his most vulnerable. No matter how lean his earlier recordings were, they always bore the signature trace of his physicality. His playing here is sheer, translucent, almost spectral. His phrases are so full of longing, they shift mid syntax to explore new emotional depths.

- Thom Jurek

The Aluminum Group

Pedals

August 24, 1999

Alternative/Indie Rock

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Pedals fulfills the immense promise of the group's previous recordings, largely dispensing of the derivative synth-pop detours which hampered the preceding Plano to concentrate instead on the lush, darkly romantic, orchestral arrangements distinguishing the band's finest work.

- Jason Ankeny