Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
Sounds gave a very satisfactory rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars to the album. Pete Silverton noted a change in the sound, noting, "The mix is different to the last album. Now there's a clarity which frames Sue's voice like it was a thing of treasure". Silverton also wrote that some of the songs have "Siouxsie’s voice double-tracked with devastating effect".
In other papers like the Melody Maker, Jon Savage described the first track, "Poppy Day", as a "short, powerful evocation of the Great War graveyards in Flanders." He also wrote about "Placebo Effect": it "has a stunning flanged guitar intro, chasing clinical lyrics covering some insertion or operation." About "Icon", Savage wrote: "the brilliantly reverbed guitar is a perfect foil for Siouxsie's soaring and, for once, emotional vocal." Record Mirror also hailed the record, and qualified it as "a dangerous and volatile work which should be heard."
Critic Kenneth Ansell of Blank Space described in October 1979 the band's version of "The Lord's Prayer" as being not "a cathartic experience... The main problem I find in being confronted with 'The Lord's Prayer' at the tail of the album is that its inherent looseness of structure comes as something of a quantum jump from the carefully structured material that dominates the rest of the record. Nevertheless, it is a comparatively minor complaint", before calling Join Hands "an outstanding album" and praising the other tracks on the record. AllMusic shares the same of point of view about the final track of the album.
Read more about this topic: Join Hands
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)