★★★★★
If there's one thing that will explain to the uninitiated who Yann Tiersen is, it's that he is the musician who provided the soundtrack for the 2001 French film Amelie one of the most internationally popular French films of the Millennial and which enticed many hipster film goers into their nearest multiplexes by way of Audrey Tatou's sassy urchin performance, a Parisian Bjork for the big screen of over a decade ago...
- www.adequacy.net
2014-05-31
★★★★★
The French composer Yann Tiersen has fused rock and classical (or "new") music since he arrived nearly full-formed in 1995, predating indie rock's obsession with composerly fare by almost a decade. And his soundtrack to the 2001 film Amelie was probably one of the first that young indie-loving English majors from Florida to Oregon purchased of their own accord, as girls and guys alike fell hard for Audrey Tautou and Tiersen's vibrant motifs with equal vigor...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2014-05-23
★★★★★
One gets the impression that Yann Tiersen has spent much of his career trying to distance himself from the music that most people, or at least most Americans, know him for. Back in 2001 everybody was pumping the Amélie soundtrack, myself included. Who didn't find themselves at some point in the early aughts waltzing around their living room on a bright spring morning while the accordions and violins that formed the backdrop of Amélie blared out of the stereo...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-05-21
★★★★★
Head here to submit your own review of this album.
Breton musician and composer Yann Tiersen has made a name for himself through his various esoteric yet childlike scores for the big screen. The soundtracks to Goodbye Lenin and Amelie exposed Tiersen's ivory-tinkling talents to the world, yet each possessing something a little bit more intriguing than your average grandiose Hans Zimmer or John Williams score...
- www.thefourohfive.com
2014-05-22
★★★★★
I suspect there's many an Anglophone listener for whom there's always been something quintessentially "French" about Yann Tiersen. The Breton multi-instrumentalist's brand of orchestral post-rock has haunted the peripheries of the alternative music zeitgeist since the days of Amélie, one of the most successful French cinematic exports of--well, perhaps ever--and a whiff of francité has long since trailed him. Maybe that's something that Tiersen's finally trying to put to bed with ? (Infinity)...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2014-05-21
★★★★★
Yann Tiersen was responsible for the soundtrack to . However, the success of his score for the 2001 romantic comedy has threatened to overshadow his other work. This, his eighth studio album, is a moody reflection on the stony, weather-beaten island of Ushant, 30 kilometres off the coast of Brittany, that the French composer calls home...
- www.nme.com
2014-05-20
★★★★★
"Best known for the soundtrack to Amelie" will follow Yann Tiersen around forever. And rightly so; what a charming soundtrack it was. Tiersen is now 13 years divorced from that project, which just about sums up the looming spectre of a successful soundtrack over an otherwise relatively-unknown composer.
Work on Infinity started in Iceland, and was followed up by some work in "Ushant Island, Brittany" - where Tiersen hails from...
- www.musicomh.com
2014-05-21
★★★★★
Rumours of a new Yann Tiersen album always come with the promise of something magical - each one is a doorway, a porthole, a picture book of sorts. The thrill of his arrival in the early 90s, along with Dominique A and the Têtes Raides, just doesn't fade. Infinity - his eighth studio album to date, released this week - is a picture book of the best kind, all waxed paper and stormy skies and age-old languages (the songs are in Breton, Faroese, Aidan Moffatt's Scottish English and Icelandic) and...
- thequietus.com
2014-05-21
★★★★★
The island of Ushant, or Ouessant, is defined by its remoteness. Perched off the coast of Brittany at the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the English Channel, this windswept rocky outcrop has a place in the literary imagination (it's mentioned by Orwell, Forester and Prévert among others), and is the location of the Créac'h lighthouse, said to be one of the world's most powerful, although it wasn't bright enough to stop the Amoco Cadiz oil carrier running aground in 1978, bringing...
- www.wonderingsound.com
2014-05-20