★★★★★
Uprooting from Brooklyn to Portland makes sense when you're an artist that makes balmy dream pop. For Pure Bathing Culture, it completely inspired their debut album, . Musical/romantic couple Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman (who tour as members of Sub Pop folkies Vetiver) one day began making music together. After hearing last year's EP, Richard Swift (Foxygen, the Shins) offered to produce their album at his scenic National Freedom studio in Cottage Grove, OR...
- exclaim.ca
2013-10-19
★★★★★
On Moon Tides, Pure Bathing Culture takes its listeners on a canoe ride beneath a blanket of stars and painkillers. It's a fine collection of easy, pillowy soft songs but lacks that necessary adhesive to make them stick. Not that there isn't value in the fleeting, bliss-out time that happens while the record spins in motion, because there is.
"Only Lonely Lovers" glints with faint disco bells, twisted into pirouetting guitar...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-09-05
★★★★★
Vetiver refugees Daniel Hindman and Sarah Versprille have created one of the few bands to compare themselves to Cocteau Twins and actually hit somewhere near that mark. The pair have rechristened themselves Pure Bathing Culture and have delivered a glossy, breezy debut album. Moon Tides feels lightweight and effortless, its buoyant temperament a key selling point; Versprille's soft voice floats over and through the roomy mix of keyboards, mechanical rhythms, and sparkling-clean guitars,...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2013-08-24
★★★★★
Controller of emotions, influencer of the tides and the menstrual cycle, the moon is a symbol in the night sky full of mythical constellations used by ship navigators for centuries. In literature and in music, the moon appears everywhere; one of my favorite lines about it comes from Samuel Beckett: "Let me hear nothing of the moon, in my night there is no moon, and if it happens that I speak of the stars it is by mistake...
- www.noripcord.com
2013-08-23
★★★★★
Pure Bathing Culture might only have a self-titled EP and now debut album Moon Tides under their belt, but Sarah Versprille (vocals and keyboards) and Daniel Hindman (guitar) have already built up a fairly extensive CV in the American indie-folk scene as members of Laurel Canyon revivalists Vetiver, and contributors to recent albums by Foxygen and Damien Jurado, under the aegis of multi-instrumentalist and producer-of-choice Richard Swift...
- thelineofbestfit.com
2013-08-22
★★★★★
It's a shame that Beach House has its equal share of admirers and detractors. When I reviewed Bloom, and gave the record a perfect score, there were howls of outrage levelled at me for overhyping the long player from Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand. So, a word of caution here, folks. If you absolutely hate Beach House, and simply cannot stand their music, when Portland, Oregon's Pure Bathing Culture comes walking down the street, you will want to quickly cross to the other side, make the sign...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-08-20
★★★★★
Just Like Beach House
It's a shame that Beach House has its equal share of admirers and detractors. When I reviewed Bloom, and gave the record a perfect score, there were howls of outrage levelled at me for overhyping the long player from Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand. So, a word of caution here, folks...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-09-05
★★★★★
Following last year's acclaimed self-titled EP, Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture return with a meticulously crafted dream pop treat that makes the perfect soundtrack to face the end of the summer. Besides the album being inspired by tides and water - the element 'often associated with human emotion', they report - and besides the relaxing images their name evokes, it is the hybrid nature of their sound, at once so obfuscating and gleaming, which perfectly suits transitions...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-08-19
★★★★★
In nine short songs, Pure Bathing Culture's Moon Tides whisks the listener to a desolate, sunny, Scandinavian beach for an all-too-brief while. With shimmering Galaxie 500 guitars, Stephin Merritt melodies and huge choruses with focused pop production, it's near perfection for a debut. "Twins" jangles before the joy of the chorus dawns majestically; "Only Lonely Lovers" croons as a lullaby on a sunny day. In short, the band brilliantly harks back to the nearly forgotten art of blissful pop.
- filtermagazine.com
2013-08-20
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