Visions
| Grimes
Visions
Visions is the third studio album by Canadian singer and songwriter Grimes, released on January 31, 2012. Her first since signing with 4AD, the album was recorded entirely on Apple's GarageBand software in Grimes' apartment over a three-week period. It was mixed by Grimes and her manager Sebastian Cowan at their La Brique Studio Space. Visions was streamed on the NPR website a week before it was released in the United States. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Grimes is the one-woman cyborg-pop project of Montreal's Claire Boucher. Visions, her compulsively listenable third album, is an electro cotton-candy entryway to her peculiar kind of bliss.
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Consequence of Sound
Visions is a remarkable outing for Boucher in that it manages to showcase her knack for spinning bits and pieces from all points on the musical spectrum into crafty, easily digestible pop.
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A.V. Club Music
A record that’s so evocatively textured it’s practically a tactile experience.
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NME
Visions of pop music’s past – and a glimpse of its future.
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The Guardian
It's one thing to cause a hiccup in the pop matrix, quite another to have it reverb across the broader cultural landscape like Visions does.
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Pop Matters
She may have the name of a hobo and the look of a streetpunk, but Grimes sounds like a dream.
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Slant Magazine
Visions is a flawed but intimate glimpse into the fantasies of its creator, and while it might not act as a springboard to greater fame for Grimes, it’s just as satisfying to hear her take her bedroom music into a darkened basement, away from the prying world.
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All Music
Fresh and surprisingly accessible despite its quirks, Visions is bewitching.
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BBC Music
A third LP to savour from the distinctive Canadian artist.
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Sputnik Music
"Visions" is all set to be a seminal document, so listen. I’m glad that when 3012 rolls around we’ll still be dancing.
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PPCorn
Though I was expecting more from this album, Grimes still delivered an LP that is catchy and satisfying.
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Rolling Stone
Boucher, who cooked up this music in her bedroom using GarageBand, is full of interesting rhythmic and melodic ideas.
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NPR
Visions reveals Boucher to be a promising young artist and producer with a clear vision.
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Flux Magazine
Visions is one of the weirdest, and best, pop albums in a long time.
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The Quietus
It doesn't sound like it's striving or straining to be pop music, or conversely that it's determined to be awkward - it's just going where pleasure leads it. It's also warm and natural sounding in comparison to the witch house crew with whom Boucher shares sonic genes.
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QRO Magazine
Visions is a mystical experience, an album that should be listened from start to finish without pause, a snapshot of the workings of Boucher’s brilliantly creative mind that certainly has so much more waiting to burst from it.
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Wheel Scene
Lykke Li may be leading the current charge of female indie pop, but Grimes is a contender for people’s champ.
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L.A. Music Blog
The strength of Visions, her first album for new label 4AD, and therefore one likely to establish her a much larger audience, is in Boucher’s ability to take these familiar and sometimes disparate components and reshape them into something that avoids simply being classified as another ’80s revival album.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
No one zeroes in on the tricky politics of cultural intercourse quite so graphically.
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SPIN
Visions displays a young singer developing a relationship with her own voice and the seemingly infinite possibilities for shaping and representing it.
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Mind Equals Blown
The amount of thought and the variety of sounds, instrumentation and structures is uncanny. The more you visit it the more you discover.
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NOW Magazine
While Visions is unmistakably 2012 sonically in its references to R&B and hip-hop, it also fits remarkably gracefully into 4AD's impressive back catalogue of dream pop - you can picture Cocteau Twins touring with her back in their heyday.
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Pretty Much Amazing
In a zeitgeist where we’ve started valuing repetitive minimalism in electronic music, Grimes really sounds like the chaotic and ultimately irresistible future. The kind where everything is happening, all of the time.
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Exclaim!
The fact that it's both artistically bugged out and immediately rewarding is just the icing on the cake.
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Drowned in Sound
Let Visions run alongside your life. Dance to it. Sing along. Ignore the fact that half the time, you really can’t grasp what you’re supposed to be singing about. Just make the noises. Let it mean what you need it to mean.
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Amp Kicker
Aside from her unique vibe and vocals, by being a wizard at programming synthesizers, mixing machines and drum machines like no one’s business, not to mention, mastering a mixing board on her most recent album, well, this street cred gets Visions
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Pop'stache
Despite Visions’ airs, there’s no sense, even from Boucher, that this album ever wanted to be taken as a unified collection of songs and not far-out shots in the dark.
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Under the Radar Mag
Visions stands as a half-formed concept.
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Prefix Mag
She’s exported to all of us her very compelling way of seeing, and now everyone has the chance to experience that too.
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Austinist
From its hipster, dance club appeal, to its chipmunk-like squeals and layered vocals, the album is nostalgic but refreshing, with Boucher confidently shaping her own, distinguishable sound.
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The Boston Globe
While Grimes sounds like she’s still sorting out what it all means, her uncertainty is worth sharing.
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Contact Music
Grimes clearly has talent and creativity by the bucket load so expectations are, based on past and present performance, justifiably high.
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Bearded Gentlemen Music
Grimes Visions is the real deal and a better listen to boot.
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The New York Times
It’s easily Ms. Boucher’s best work and one of the most impressive albums of the year so far.
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Weeping Elvis
Rather than embracing the tangible and immediate, it floats through a foggy dream of industrial-inflected beats and wispy pop vocals that are often cinematic and occasionally heavenly. The ethereal audio that results is aptly named Visions.
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Anvil Blue Music
"Visions" is an ambitious and largely successful piece of ambient electronic music.
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Under the Radar
Visions is a very complex, intricate, and dark album that requires more than one listen to appreciate it as a whole.
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The Skinny
Although apt to bewitch the listener with its seductive pop signifiers, this is music that stands up to obsessive scrutiny; each track resonating simultaneously with the pain of loss and the joy of transmutation – the mystical thrill of self expression.
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Thumped
Visions intrigues, lets just hope she’s allowed to flourish further.
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Northern Transmissions
While past Grimes efforts have shaded on a bit of the darker side, the new album feels very light.
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Kisses and Noise
Visions reveals a more cohesive approach to crafting songs which lends more direction to the album and gives Grimes a distinctive songwriting signature.
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Faronheit
Grimes has been an artist to watch from the day she first started releasing music 2 years ago, but only now, thanks to Visions will she begin to earn the attention she truly deserves.
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The AU Review
One of the most eclectic and unique albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this year!
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Boston
Faced with the limitless possibilities of what (or who, or when) to sound like, the real work for today’s pop-maker isn’t just writing a catchy tune. She must also plot her own boundaries, curate her referents, and properly hybridize her vibe. Montreal’s Claire Boucher meets these tasks with airy ease on “Visions,’’ her fourth outing as Grimes.
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Music Liberation
An obvious hit in indie circles, with wider appeal to pop and rnB, the hype is well deserved.
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Photog Music
One of the best of 2012 (so far).
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No Ripcord
Forget meaningless labels like witch-house or chillwave, this is just great pop music.
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The New Millenial
‘Visions’ exists somewhere in the netherworld between the disjointed sound-smithing of Aphex Twin and the bubblegum of Katy Perry. Who would have thought it would work so well?
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CU Independent
Visions is about as respectful of a dance album that you could ask for.
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Luddite Stereo
It’s the sound of a true artist coming into her own.
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Velocities in Music
A solid electro-pop record with some highlight tracks.
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Weekly Alibi
If you can get past the baby talk and girlish trills, this album is a decadent electro-psychedelic exercise in retro futurism. Visions—from Montreal DJ/producer Claire Boucher—is macabre and lovelorn in tone with fuzzy, aggressive beats and ambient qualities in the key of shoegaze and dream pop.
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Dethinking
An album of shifting, shimmering textures that is both a spaced out exploration and the perfect pop album.
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XLR8R
In the midst of the photo spreads and in-depth interviews that will soon befall Grimes, hopefully the world won't lose sight of how she earned the status: by crafting some of the year's most challenging and rewarding pop music this side of MTV.
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Tom Tom Magazine
The album is laced with gorgeously layered and thick vocals, giving it an epic edge that nonetheless stands on a different platform as a psychedelic dance album.
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Collapse Board
With each listen, Visions seduces me a little more, yet at the same time, I know I will never truly love it. It feels like a very well executed work that lacks an emotional core; great for doing the dishes to but if your focus is only the music then you’re likely to feel somewhat entertained but somehow empty.
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Cool Dad Music
As a neighbor of mine once said, "There is no right way, no pure way, of doing. There is just doing." So don't dismiss this just because it's all bleeps and bloops.
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The Needle Drop
On the third album to come from the Canadian synth pop project Grimes, the songs feel a little undercooked--however, I will this this project has a nice, clear sound and style.
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YPOIW
What ultimately frustrates me about Visions is how safe it sounds.
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Rappler
"Visions" is sheer pop will to power on machineries of joy which may not be unbridled but cascades with its potential ecstasies.
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indie30
Visions gets better each time you hear it, and Grimes has cemented herself as an example of what indie is all about.
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The 405
This album makes promises of its own. Its flashes of brilliance promise better work yet to come.
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The Arts Desk
Montreal sonic experimentalist with her lushest long-player yet.
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Nialler 9
Considered and sharply arranged, Visions is a thrill.
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Temporary Rough Venom
I don't even understand any of the layered, looped vocals but that doesn't really matter when all the sounds could provide the best soundtrack to female robots becoming sentient and discovering their gender through various circuitry and sleek components.
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Cherwell
Boucher’s ethereal Visions need no correcting.
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Purple Sneakers
Visions is pop enough to be palatable, and edgy enough to stand out from the pack.
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Entertainment
Visions is a masterpiece of dreamy electro-pop and its no-frills construction places Claire Boucher firmly at the forefront of the cutting edge of a brave new musical movement.
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Spectrum Culture
Grimes has crafted a confident, moving and immersive work that not only seeks to break down the schism between Pop and Rock, but also makes a bold statement for female musicians who have their own unique visions and struggle to see them realized in an industry and genre continually dominated by men.
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Reviler
I didn’t think Visions was earth shattering, but it grabbed me enough that I’ll stick around to see what happens next.
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