★★★★★
It's been a long 30 years since Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas first came together as BoDeans in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Late period signings to Slash Records (along with fellow Forward! Staters Violent Femmes) the band scored the Rolling Stone nod for Best New American Band in 1987 with their debut Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, following in short order with sophomore shot Outside Looking In...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-02-16
★★★★★
Having finally achieved popstardom via their Party of Five theme song, this long-sufferingWisconsin bar band now tries to preserve their meager integrityby acting as un-Hollywood as possible. With its timid, muffledharmonies over numbing guitar thrumming, Blend has enoughforlorn corn to fill every silo in the heartland. Only when theBoDeans clean up the sound in "Hey Pretty Girl" do they approachthe mildly catchy hooks of "Closer to Free." C
- ew.com
2011-03-03
★★★★★
TV sitcoms have lousytaste in music. First Friends commissioned that annoyingRembrandts song ("I'll Be There for You"). Now Party of Five chooses "Closer to Free", the one cheesy tune the BoDeans ever wrote for itsopening song and releases it as a single. The song, from their1993 LP Go Down Slow, has the chirpy, Beatlesque pleasures of adecent jingle. But a band this good deserves to be known forsomething better. C
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
Signed to Slash and contemporaries of The Del Fuegos and Beat Farmers, Wisconsin's BoDeans began cutting solid, if unspectacular, roots-rock with 1986's Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams. Despite top-notch producers (T-Bone Burnett, Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison), touring with U2 and a Rolling Stone Best New Band gong, they never quite pulled it off...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
There was a time in the '80s when Waukesha, Wisconsin's The BoDeans were arguably one of America's best meat and potatoes roots rock bands and an always impressive live act. Taking the title of their first album from a Rolling Stones song and armed with the production skills of T...
- www.ink19.com
2010-04-22
★★★★★
Nine albums into a career that's stretched almost 25 years, the BoDeans have lost their edge. Granted, their brand of heartland rock was never that edgy, but counter to the strong showing of 2008's Still, with a few exceptions, the songwriting on Mr. Sad Clown seems forced and lyrically simplistic. As always, the best songs are the ones that Kurt Neumann, an Austin resident, and Sam Llanas, who still calls the band's birthplace of Milwaukee home, sing together...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2010-03-19
★★★★★
Sam Llanas and Kurt Neumann remain a musical marriage for the ages. Two decades on, and Still comes as a declaration: BoDeans are still with us, still rocking stellar lyrics and great harmonies. The pair reunites with producer T-Bone Burnett, who produced its captivating debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, in 1986...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2009-07-21
★★★★★
How anyone could justify the release of the double-length live album Joe Dirt Car by a middling bar band like BoDeans is a conundrum of major proportions. Granted, these Wisconsin roots rockers' songs are tuneful enough, and catchy in a generic sort of way. But there's no excuse for this sort of excess.
- ew.com
2009-06-12
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