Beautiful Rewind

Release

The album was announced on 22 July 2013. Kieran Hebden hinted that the release of the album would be low-key, stating on Twitter that there would be "no pre order, no youtube trailers, no itunes stream, no spotify, no amazon deal, no charts, no bit coin deal, no last minute rick rubin [referring to Rubin's enlistment by Kanye West to perform last-minute alterations to his recently released album Yeezus]."

Reception

Upon its release, Beautiful Rewind received some critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from mainstream critics, the album has received a metascore of 79, based on 18 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

AllMusic reviewer Andy Kellman awarded Beautiful Rewind four stars out of five, stating that "while the album does seem rather patched together with a lack of focus...there's an irrefutable charm to the restlessness." In her review for Consequence of Sound, Paula Mejia was disappointed that "the tracks don’t necessarily resonate as did the memorable, emotive singles that won over listeners’ hearts to begin with on catalogue highlight Rounds" and scored the album three-and-a-half stars out of five. Fact magazine's Tom Lea also rated it at three-and-a-half stars out of five, offering the opinion that "Beautiful Rewind feels like Four Tet coming full circle" before commenting that "no matter how grubby it gets, at the heart of it will always be one fact: Four Tet’s forte is making Beautiful Music." Killian Fox, writing for The Observer, described the album as "an (almost) unexpected pleasure" and awarded Beautiful Rewind four stars out of five.

Track listing

All tracks written by Kieran Hebden.