★★★★★
Book of Love have received the deluxe remaster-and-reissue treatment on Collectors's Choice's Noble Rot Records. The electro-synth-pop darlings originally put out four albums on Sire between 1986 and 1993, and each one is now presented in an expanded form with an interesting, if somewhat incomplete selection of bonus materials, and packaged with extensive liner notes in slim, gatefold digipack sleeves...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
★★★★★
Several years ago a group of scientists, sociologists, and theologians gathered to solve one of the enduring questions of the modern age. Just what, exactly, was the greatest new wave song ever written? If you followed the news at all, you will remember that this august group wisely agreed on Book of Love's 1985 hit "Boy.""Boy" has it all. Chiming bells, layers of synths, and deadpan vocals singing something that I think is vaguely dirty. Science got it right once again...
- www.ink19.com
2010-02-18
★★★★★
In the first track on their third album, this quartet of art-college alumni explicitly state their desire to deliver music that's "candy to our ears/sweet to the taste." In subsequent numbers, Book of Love go on to embrace such cheery confections as buttercups, butterflies, and sunny days. Devoid of meat and potatoes, their childlike prose threatens to get queasily precious, almost as if allthis simplicity were some condescending kind of smoke screen...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
From 1987 onward, Sire Records' Just Say Yes series was the best yearly taste of alternative (when that word was a compliment) music released stateside. The five sterling volumes (I try to forget 1992's sixth volume Just Say Yesterday) featured the most established acts in the Sire family (the Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine, Depeche Mode), the series also introduced me to personal favorites like the Ocean Blue, James, Primal Scream, and the Wild Swans...
- www.popmatters.com
2009-03-23
★★★★★
Book of Love plays synthesizer-based dance-pop with an edge. The music is sweeter and lighter than much in this genre, and vocalist Susan Ottaviano has a matter-of-fact phrasing style that keeps it all from getting too sweet (not unlike Deborah Harry's work with Blondie). On this debut album, songs like "You Make Me Feel So Good" have an effervescent early-'60s girl group bounce, while others suggest what the early Velvet Underground with Nico might have sounded like with synthesizers...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
The fifth album by the synth quintet Book of Love kicks off with the hypnotic, mostly instrumental "Sunday Morning A.M.," featuring Susan Ottaviano breathily repeating the word "always." It's followed by the bittersweet "Happily Ever After," which includes a cool sample of the Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius." The group injects David Bowie's "Sound and Vision" with perk (and more than a few layers of keyboard noodlings and a throbbing dance beat)...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
From 1987 onward, Sire Records' Just Say Yes series was the best yearly taste of alternative (when that word was a compliment) music released stateside. The five sterling volumes (I try to forget 1992's sixth volume Just Say Yesterday) featured the most established acts in the Sire family (the Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine, Depeche Mode), the series also introduced me to personal favorites like the Ocean Blue, James, Primal Scream, and the Wild Swans...
- www.popmatters.com
2008-08-03
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