Pryor Stroud: “Nebula” is the aural equivalent of an impressionist painting that seems to move after you’ve been staring at it for a while. Barwick’s voice is present, but it’s an apparition, a mist evaporating just as it nears solidity; the wavy, measured synthesizer that provides the track’s backdrop is just as elusive, changing shape just when you think you can classify it and pin it down. [6/10]
Emmanuel Elone: It’s amazing how much emotion Julianna Barwick brings on voiceless tracks like “Nebula”. With its echoing vocal melody in the background and some barebones instrumentation, this song is a passionate soundscape of loneliness and personal anguish. At times, the track becomes more uninteresting, but overall it’s a nice song that takes the melancholy of mankind and translates it into a mood and atmospheric song that pulls at the listener’s memories and heartstrings in a way that not many songs can. [6/10]
Ian King: Five years from now, Julianna Barwick could very well be widely recognized as a pioneer of “a capella shoegaze”. This should be getting regular rotation in art galleries far and wide. [6/10]
Chris Ingalls: The warm, repetitious, evolving synths are a revelation, giving the song a cozy Phillip Glass vibe. The vocals, while pretty, tilt the whole thing toward new age territory. Light as a feather, likely something of a grower, this is something I could learn to love. But you’d have to be in the mood for it. Definitely piques my interest for more of this artist’s work. [6/10]
Chad Miller: Nice ambient piece. The vocals seem to exist too far out of the texture.The music is nice, but a little more variety would have been nice. It wasn’t interesting enough to be able to demand that amount of the song. [6/10]
Julianna Barwick‘s new album Will releases May 6th via Dead Oceans.
SCORE: 6.00