Length 39:53 Release date 14 March 2011 Label Fake Diamond Records | Artist Oh Land Genre Electropop | |
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Released 14 March 2011 (2011-03-14) Recorded 2009–10; Mr. Dan's Streathem (United Kingdom)
Premier Recording Studio (New York City)
Secret Frequency Studio (Los Angeles) Producers Dan Carey, Dave McCracken, Lester Mendez Similar Oh Land albums, Electropop albums | ||
Oh land perfection
Oh Land is the second studio album and major-label debut album by Danish recording artist Oh Land. It was released on 14 March 2011 by Fake Diamond Records and A:larm Music. An extended play with the same name was released in advance on 19 October 2010, containing four tracks from the full-length album.
Contents
"Sun of a Gun" was released as the album's lead single on 4 October 2010. "Wolf & I", "Voodoo" and "White Nights" were released as singles on 13 March, 3 April and 22 May 2011, respectively. A deluxe edition of the album was released in Denmark on 5 December 2011, including the single "Speak Out Now", which was released on 28 November 2011.
Oh land human
Critical reception
Oh Land received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 62, based on seven reviews. Barry Walters of Spin wrote, "This stunning Dane's synths-plus-strings slant on singer-songwriter lovesickness offers refinement over innovation, yet Nanna Øland Fabricius beguiles with a gently insistent presence." Kerri Mason of Billboard opined that Oh Land "might have made the year's first great left-field pop album", praising the songs as "endlessly catchy" and concluding that "the tilting scales of light and dark give the collection a definite creep factor and a clever complexity." AllMusic's Andrew Leahey described the album as an "'anything goes' mix of club, dance, and nocturnal electro-pop", adding that Oh Land "doesn't rewrite the rule book as much as join the ranks of La Roux, Little Boots, and Janelle Monáe. But that doesn't keep her debut album from churning out a number of intelligent club anthems".
In a mixed review, Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani expressed that Oh Land's "cinematic arrangements bring Janelle Monáe's ambitious approach to pop music to mind, but tracks like 'Wolf & I' and 'Lean' draw a bit too heavily from the trip-hop playbook [...] and, however well-excecuted [sic] they may be, end up sounding derivative." Similarly, Fraser McAlpine of BBC Music felt that "there's a bit of an identity void at the heart of the thing, a lack of personality. It might just be that Oh Land is more skilled at getting songs to sound current than she is at expressing herself." Drowned in Sound's John Calvert called the album "hip, diverse and always vibrant", but also branded it "pretty forgettable". Calvert pointed out the production work of Dave McCracken and Dan Carey, noting the album "inhabits a tepid middle ground between the two extremes—offering neither gilded Scandi chart-pop (Robyn, Annie) or the artistic mettle of Scandi indie bands, most of whom are able to turn out sublime pop anyway."
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Oh Land.
Songs
1Perfection4:58
2Break the Chain3:18
3Sun Of A Gun3:26