★★★★★
Over the past 11 years and four albums, Rogue Wave have had a miscellaneous cast revolving around original members Zach Rogue and Pat Spurgeon. While the faces have changed, their sound, barring the disappointing electro of fourth album 'Permalight', has largely remained the same. With this, their fifth, they're back to the jangling, melodic indie rock they do so well. Opener 'No Magnatone' shuffles along pleasantly, as does much of the rest - and that is perhaps the album's biggest problem...
- www.nme.com
2013-12-17
★★★★★
Rogue Wave has had a very "indie" career--from the band's jangly, sensitive aesthetic and critical acclaim to its prevalence on television and film soundtracks and, unfortunately, relative anonymity to mainstream listeners. In other words, for a band of its caliber and songwriting prowess, its career arc has probably felt lackluster both to its members and their fans. That, however, has not stopped the Oakland, Calif...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2013-07-04
★★★★★
Rogue Wave are one of the few bands keeping the legacy of the Beatles' songwriting alive and doing it well. As the pervading trend in modern music is toward rhythm based forms that de-emphasize melody and harmony, they ride a different wave, if you'll pardon the expression. Call it a throwback if you like, but I say more fool you...
- www.noripcord.com
2013-06-18
★★★★★
Rogue Wave have never been one to rock the boat - if anything, their moniker seems a better fit for the band's almost cosmically unlucky hardships than their "safe" brand of mid-'00s college indie. It's perhaps why received such a critical and commercial backlash upon its release in 2010. Rogue Wave was still Rogue Wave, frontman Zach Schwartz and drummer Patrick Spurgeon still the soul and beating heart of the band, and the hooks still sparkly and cleverly hiding the ache that has permeated so...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2013-06-27
★★★★★
Rogue Wave move onwards and upwards. The Oakland band have experienced more than their fair share of life's adversities through health issues and death. In spite of trials that would throw anyone off course, the band, including original members Zach Rogue and Pat Spurgeon, have gotten right back on track for album number five. Enlisting the expertise of producer John Congleton (David Byrne & St...
- filtermagazine.com
2013-06-08
★★★★★
Rogue Wave, like so many independent pop artists, is a collection of lucid and emotive memories in the minds of his listeners. Maybe it was the gut-crunching "California" heard first on a downtown A-train, or "Eyes" in the midst of a perfectly terrible break up, or "Lake Michigan", the lead track of a brave little mixtape sent to a light-eyed girl in Montana when it might well have been shot into space...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-06-07
★★★★★
More than three years removed from 2010's letdown Permalight , Rogue Wave' s garish foray into synthesized electro-pop, singer/songwriter/guitarist Zach Rogue is framing Nightingale Floors as something of a comeback. Although Permalight debuted respectably at #149 on the Billboard 200 -- Rogue Wave's highest chart positioning to date -- this nascent pulse was short-lived; sales fell off quickly and sharply before languishing at a disappointing 21,000...
- consequenceofsound.net
2013-06-06
★★★★★
Rogue Wave is a band inappropriately named. They take their nom de plume from a certain oceanographic phenomenon in which large, dangerous waves arise out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean. It's better to divorce the band's name from the freak seaward occurrences because if such a phenomenon is meant to conjure up ideas of the sounds on Nightingale Floors, such a title fails...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-06-05
★★★★★
Zach Schwartz (a.k.a. Zach Rogue) is a guy who believes in the power of positive thinking, and he's had plenty of cause to lean on it aggressively. He's lost jobs and close friends, yet the Rogue Wave frontman has always managed to find some glimmer of hope through his various trials. Yet while past Rogue Wave albums have triumphed over despair by dabbling pleasantly in warm, atmospheric indie pop, Nightingale Floors, the Oakland band's fifth full-length effort, pushes the band's stoicism to...
- www.avclub.com
2013-06-04