Critical reception

Critical response to the album has been mixed, with some critics praising Black's blend of sounds and others criticizing his lack of originality. According to Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album holds a score of 67/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews", based on ten reviews. Lou Thomas of BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 wrote a favorable review of the album, stating, "Dan Black has made a smart, confident record that is far more accessible than many made by such an overtly cool customer." Andy Gill of The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

also wrote favorably of the album, calling it "An impressive debut." Neil McCormick of The Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, complimenting Black's new image and describing the record as "smart, addictive future pop." A reviewer from Mojo

Mojo (magazine)

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...

, impressed with the album, stated, "Black's chops and tunes suggest he won't stay underground."

However, not all reviews were favorable. Dave Simpson of The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

gave the album 3 out of 5 stars, stating, "His whiny vocals grate after a while, and while tracks like Yours offer fabulous - if soulless - computerised funk, the impact of the discoid stomper Pump By Pumps is rather dulled when you realise the tune had a previous life as Cliff Richard's

Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

 Devil Woman

Devil Woman

"Devil Woman" is a 1976 hit single for Cliff Richard culled from his album I'm Nearly Famous.-Background:"Devil Woman" was written by Terry Britten and Christine Holmes and first recorded by Holmes under the name Kristine....

." Barry Walters of Spin

Spin (magazine)

Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

, who gave the album a six out of ten, stated the album's lead single "epitomizes the downbeat side of Black's knack for recycling divergent styles into cinematic synth pop." However, Walters also complimented Dan's style, stating, "the album works best when Black's mood swings between Technicolor dreams and depressing quotidian details."" Louis Pattison of NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

also wrote an unfavorable review, stating that the "Truth is, Dan Black surfed this hype wave by doing a clever thing with bits of other people’s songs. ‘Symphonies’ aside, he’s still got to find himself in them." Chris Parkin of Dot Music also wrote unfavorably of the album, stating, "However much electro trickery he has at his fingertips, he needs some songs first." Chad Parkhill of Rave, criticized the album's lack of coherence, calling it "the kind of one-man creative enterprise that demonstrates exactly the perils of going it alone."

Accolades

Title	Award	Nominated work	Result
2010 MTV Video Music Awards 2010 MTV Video Music Awards The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards took place on September 12, 2010 at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, honoring the best music videos from the previous year...	Best Special Effects in a Video MTV Video Music Award for Best Special Effects The following is a list of MTV Video Music Awards winners for Best Special Effects in a Video....	"Symphonies"
2010 MTV Video Music Awards 2010 MTV Video Music Awards The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards took place on September 12, 2010 at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, honoring the best music videos from the previous year...	Breakthrough Video	"Symphonies"

Release history

Country	Date	Label
United Kingdom	13 July 2009	Polydor Records Polydor Records Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
United States	16 February 2010