★★★★★
She's pals with Michael Stipe and Conor Oberst and has been recording both as part of her group Azure Ray and as a solo artist for over a decade. Her music is regularly featured on films and television. So why is Maria Taylor still very far from a household name?
It's not as if her music is wilfully uncommercial - her fifth solo record Something About Knowing is full of her smart, accessible folky pop and you can easily imagine any of these tracks fitting in quite nicely on the radio...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-11-07
★★★★★
?????????? Something About Knowing is the perfect album to listen to on a downer day when you need a serious pick-me-up. The tones and moods that fill the album are warm, rich and easygoing, and if you are looking for something to lift your spirits, then it is hard not to see the beauty in a record like this. It's all about having a new outlook on life and Taylor gives you some things to think about...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2013-10-31
★★★★★
The statuesque features of Maria Taylor may be best recognisable to some as the ghostly female presence that has at various points lurked behind Conor Oberst in Bright Eyes. Taylor was probably most prominent in that band during their Cassadaga period, while her work with Orenda Fink as part of Azure Ray has produced a number of splendid records of hazy, sophisticated pop, a bit like a more grown-up, arguably slightly greyer version of CocoRosie...
- thequietus.com
2011-09-29
★★★★★
Never less than solid and occasionally intriguing, Maria Taylor's fourth solo album outside of Azure Ray is worth a look for fans of the American genre. If the wind blows the right way, she could yet pick up the chunk of the scene her followers would argue she deserves. Overlook, named after the street where she lives and a pointer to the Birmingham (Alabama, not Bull Ring) home where she wrote the songs is a loving showcase for her tender vocals and elegant compositions...
- www.themusicfix.co.uk
2011-09-19
★★★★★
Birmingham, Ala., has a surprisingly vibrant indie scene, with acts as diverse as 13ghosts, Delicate Cutters and Vulture Whale making inventive music that puts new spins on Southern rock and folk. So when Maria Taylor moved from Los Angeles back to her hometown, it wasn't like she was moving into the middle of nowhere, just somewhere very different from the West Coast...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2011-08-22
★★★★★
Find It At: Insound From her beginnings in Azure Ray, as one fragile half of a whole, Maria Taylor's musical output has always seemed guarded. Her voice always felt, on some fundamental level, whispered. Yet, her talent for emotive, sticking melodies kept most of her previous work from feeling tired. With Overlook, Taylor comes across emboldened--relatively speaking, of course--and freshly inspired...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2011-08-22
★★★★★
Four albums into her solo career, Maria Taylor remains tough to pigeonhole. Sometimes she's soft and folky; sometimes she's rougher and rootsy; sometimes she's dreamy, electronic, and experimental. Her songs are craftily constructed, with lyrics equally committed to clarity and poetry, and the production on her records--even her latest, Overlook, which she self-produced for the first time--are full of little sonic surprises that bolster her sometimes-fragile melodies...
- www.avclub.com
2011-08-22
★★★★★
Maria Taylor was/is one half--the better half--of the melancholic female duo Azure Ray, formerly Little Red Rocket. Taylor was the one who provided the sweet melodies to counter Orenda Fink's a-melodic droning. Taylor most often saved the band from the incomprehensible blandness that Fink was driving towards...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-08-22
★★★★★
Release Date: August 16th, 2011 It's early December of 2010, Maria Taylor has just completed her duties as one half of the newly reunited Azure Ray, and they're beginning to wind down and bring their constant touring schedules to a temporary standstill...
- absolutepunk.net
2011-08-15
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