Here are some of the things that have been said about Pinetop Seven. Some full-length reviews are also available.

PRESS FOR THE NIGHT'S BLOOM

"A coming of age. Memorably graceful." - Uncut

"A true thing of beauty. Branching out in every direction and using every instrument within reach to craft the kind of Midwest alternative country tome that groups like Okkervil River and Calexico have only hinted at." - All Music Guide

"A gem of an album and a much-treasured portrait of humankind." - Copper Press

"The Night's Bloom should place the band alongside Iron & Wine and Calexico as the best of bewildering and beautiful Americana. Eerily noir, bubbling with tension and possibility. The most evocative and sweeping realization yet of Pinetop Seven's particularly cinematic aesthetic." - Pitchfork

" This album will take your breath away. The Night's Bloom is a timeless gem, a luscious landscape of sound that is breathtakingly beautiful." - The Dayton Daily News

"Pensive, progressive, intricate melodic pop. Unbelievably focused arrangements and soaring melodies." - Baby Sue

"To say that Chicago's Pinetop Seven's fifth record and first for Empryean is epic is an absolute understatement." - Exoduster

"Pinetop Seven plays slow, evocative melodies, highlighting literary lyrics and a palette of unconventional instruments. If you were having a dream in which circus musicians were playing on top of a flatbed truck rolling through a deserted Oklahoma town, and a ghost was singing, it might sound a little like Pinetop Seven." - Court TV

"The Night's Bloom is a stunning record. One of the year's best." - Pop Matters

"With its string-enhanced orchestrations, The Night's Bloom is Pinetop Seven's chamber country masterwork. It may never be heard on commercial radio, but it's just what you want to put on after closing time." - Now Magazine

PAST REVIEWS

"rich with the beauty of daunting vast spaces and intimate close details. both timeless and utterly modern" - NPR, All Things Considered

"Sensitive, real, poetic, dark and atmospheric enough to paint the insides of your eyelids with dusky moors, sundown deserts, Pyrenees steppes or simply dark and lovely, immortal secrets. If this LP doesn't get you laid, nothing will." -Magnet

"the Chicago collective's fourth effort brings its widescreen vision into even sharper focus than the keen beauty of 1998's Rigging the Toplights... a striking work of mournful elegance and cinematic beauty." - CMJ

"a terrific album by folksy surrealists" - Playboy

"a fantastic record" - Fake Jazz

"...absolutely riveting and heartbreaking songwriting" - The Onion

"Pinetop Seven make beautifully crafted music that lingers in the mind long after it's finished playing" - Exclaim

"...a crushing masterpiece" - The Chicago Maroon

"One of the truly outstanding unsung releases of the year." - Creative Loafing

"There's a haunting, rural creak to their music that has a lot to do with the astonishing arsenal of instruments at the disposal of members Charles Kim, Darren Richard, and Ryan Hembrey. Strip the exotic instrumentation away and you've still got a collection of remarkable pop songs." - Now magazine

"...remarkable and highly recommended" - CMJ

"Pinetop Seven's songs of death and loss have a certain obliqueness about them, a lyrical slant which establishes a poetic distance, matched by their unexpected musical arrangements. The trio adeptly introduce a varied mix of sounds and rhythms." - The Wire

"A band that sounds like none heard before. If David Lynch and Billy Bob Thornton ever collaborate on a film, Pinetop Seven deserves to do the soundtrack." - East Bay Express

"Despite the level of musical sophistication, the stories told through the album are simple and somehow desperate, a bit like going through your granddad's musty photo albums after the funeral." - Stylus

"Truly a breath-taking accomplishment." - Chicago Sun-Times

"Pinetop Seven weave compelling and empathetic songs about inexpressible sadness and intolerable fixes that you can immediately identify with." - Exclaim

"A crestfallen collage of graceful torment..." - Seattle Weekly

"Melancholic, elegant, and intriguing at the same time, Pinetop Seven have created a stark masterpiece." - Etch

"Some of the finest songwriting I've heard in awhile. From the title of the album through each of the tracks, the disc reeks of twisted carnivals, western landscapes, and guilt." - Everybody's News

"...stately, downbeat, American movie-scapes in the Handsome [Family]/ Calexico mold. With smart engaging lyrics and an instrument collection to rival those of both aforementioned bands, the songs have a haunting, wasted beauty." - Mojo

"...one of the most intriguing records of '98, Rigging the Toplights." - Willamette Week

"Rigging the Toplights is an impressive cross-hatching of musical impulses." - The Boston Phoenix

"...a contender for one of the year's best." - Raygun

"...Chicago's Pinetop Seven forge a luxuriously mournful noise that is somehow both contemplative and stirring. A hazy reverie of fragmented songform and submerged imagery, the trio consistently infuse their fragile tone poems with hushed lyrical resonance and soft, melodic innuendo." - New City

"...a band to pay attention to. Highly recommended." - Columbia Free Times

"... the band stirs up quietly brooding snapshots of an America that Norman Rockwell wouldn't recognize. Their latest release, Rigging the Toplights, is another slow, somber beauty that should not be ignored." - The Rocket

"The Chicago trio's new LP Rigging the Toplights rolls in a feather bed of Americana, pleading folk, and ambient dirges to construct an enthralling film score just waiting for a visual to be attached to each of its carefully textured 13 tracks." - Seattle Sidewalk

"Fortunately there are little gems like Pinetop Seven that pop up unexpectantly amidst the growing pile of rotten crap." - Baby Sue

"One of the more noteworthy experimental bands to come out in years." - Metro Times

"Pinetop Seven's unique sound suggests boundless creativity. It's not another type of music, but instead, another world of music." - Pitch Fork

"...atmospheric, timeless, and intimate. The band's two releases No Breath in the Bellows and Rigging the Toplights summon the melancholy and instrumental inventiveness of Tom Waits (without the drunken misery or waltzes), a more orchestrated Smog (with actual singing), and Pavement (without the artistic self-obsession)." - The Met

"...hauntingly beautiful and very unnerving from start to finish." - Jitter magazine

"[No Breath in the Bellows] features fantastic and creative use of acoustic instruments and feelings of genuinely moving emotions. The album must be tremendous." - Yourflesh