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	E! Online Mazzy Star: Among My Swan Rating: B+ A dark star? Yeah, you could say that. The third installment in the band's ongoing saga of glacial, richly textured acousticky pop is a slo-mo kaleidoscope of folky, twangy, noisy, trippy sounds, swirling like broken glass and paisley around Hope Sandoval's relentlessly cold vocals. On a few occasions (especially "Still Cold" and "Rose Blood"), instrumental sparks fly, usually set off by David Roback's guitar, but the chill always sets in again. As beautiful as the music can be, it remains maddeningly remote. [E! Online] November 1996 Alternative Press Mazzy Star: Among My Swan Rating: 3 out of 5 hands, o.k. but not k.o. What can one say about Mazzy Star? Well, depending on one’s level of tolerance and/or reverence for what they do, several adjectives shoot right up (as it were): trancy, twangy, trippy, dreamy, droney, noodly, hippy, crappy, to name but a few. But whether or not the view is appealing, Mazzy Star’s stuff mostly all sounds like the same long reverb ride, with the odd lovely acoustic interlude thrown in. It’s tough to reckon what possesses them to keep making records. What can they express in, about, or around their lush, sometimes nigh-haunting musical aesthetic that they haven’t done to crystalline effect on either of the previous two full-lengths, She Hangs Brightly or So Tonight That I might See? How many sprawling landscapes of stoner thralldom can Hope Sandoval and David Roback unleash on a blissed-out world before the point is made? How many strung-out vocal rolls can Sandoval lilt until we know what the hell she’s getting at? Plenty, apparently. This album is not short, nor very original or gripping. Still, something about the band is undeniably appealing. Some of those riffs, played over and over (and over), are pretty good, really; all the effects are completely appropriate for this kind of overwhelming, seductive, physical music. The recording is superb, with ringing space above and full oceans of distortion below. Some songs, like the stellar campfire Western pine of “I’ve Been Let Down,” touch rare musical feeling. But when you shake off the trance you might fall into, i.e., if you’re listening to this anywhere but in your bedroom, it still sounds like they’re not so much making music as making a kind of music, which only goes so far when you’re not My Bloody Valentine or Spacemen 3. –Sean Nelson (Thanks to Jennifer for contributing this piece.) Mountlake Terrace H.S. Hawkeye Among My Swan: a good place to be By Kelly Nelson A&E Editor So, what type of music does Mazzy Star play? Most music stores would classify their sound as alternative rock, but nobody really knows what that means. Yes, they play rock sort of but Mazzy Star's brand of rock seems to float a few feet off of the ground. "Fade Into You," the popular single from their 1993 release, "So Tonight That I Might See," gave the group its big break. Anyone who was pleased with the song was probably also pleased with the album, since Mazzy Star is sometimes overwhelmingly consistent with their style. On their new release, "Among My Swan," however, a little growing and changing is evident. The slow, smudgy, dream-like quality that Mazzy had made its mark with still dominates the album, but a bit of an edge has been added. A few cuts, like "Flowers In December," and "I've Been Let Down," are more upbeat than the typical Mazzy song. "I've Been Let Down" is particularly intriguing because the pace and music sound happy, but the lyrics, and even singer Hope Sandoval's vocals, are sad and at times very slow. "Roseblood," also impresses by taking two typical Mazzy Star focuses: keyboards and fuzz bass, and pumping them harder and louder. Another song that heats up the album considerably is "Take Everything," featuring William Reid (The Jesus and Mary Chain) on lead guitar. At a few points in the song the music could actually be considered loud by most people's standards. Still, those who are already fans of the band can find the sound they've come to rely on in most of the songs on "Among My Swan." In particular, track four, "Cry, Cry," sounded pretty similar to "Fade Into You." Mazzy Star is really just a duo, including singer/songwriter/harmonica player Hope Sandoval and guitar and keyboard player/music writer David Roback. William Cooper, Keith Mitchell and Jill Emery make consistent contributions to the album on strings, drums, and bass. Sandoval and Roback co-produced the album, and Roback helped with the engineering. Sandoval continues to gain respect in the industry; Seventeen magazine commented in the November '96 issue: "If the night sky could sing, it would sound like Hope Sandoval." And that comment is right on the mark. Sandoval could probably succeed with nearly any rock band, but her voice fits perfectly with the peaceful, dreamy sounds the group produces. Fans of Sandoval should check out her duet with Jim Reid (The Jesus and Mary Chain), entitled "Sometimes Always," featured on the '94 release by that band, "Stoned and Dethroned." Mazzy Star has taken some flack in the past, with some critics saying their sound is unoriginal and uninventive. Perhaps now, since the music scene has shifted away from spacy, dream-like rock, this group can prove that they will stick to their sound and continue to develop it. [Mountlake Terrace H.S. Hawkeye (Wash St)] November 29, 1996 The Washington Post Mazzy Star's Dirges With Twang By Mark Jenkins WHEN THE HARMONICA enters on "Flowers in December," the first single from Mazzy Star's "Among My Swan," it announces a new mode, but not a new mood. Emotionally, this California group's style is still derived almost entirely from the quiet side of the Velvet Underground, an influence that was overwhelming on the band's previous album, "So Tonight That I Might See." In search of new dimensions of sadness, however, singer Hope Sandoval and guitarist David Roback have begun to explore the melancholies of country music. Despite its twang, though, "Swan" remains art-rock. These 12 songs are too claustrophobic for real country music, and no genuine truck stop balladeer would attempt a title like "Umbilical." Sandoval is currently involved with Jesus and Mary Chain guitarist William Reid (who plays on "Take Everything"), and that band's guitar din echoes on "Roseblood. " While Sandoval sings one of her melodically scant dirges, the instrumental track sounds like the JAMC playing Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" -- a combination that sums up this entire album. MAZZY STAR -- Appearing Wednesday at the Black Cat. [ ©1996 The Washington Post] February 27, 1997 The Fresno Bee Music Review: Among My Swan: Mazzy Star By Carrie Burrows High School Kid Female recording artists are beginning to fall into this ugly musical rut of being mediocre, and Mazzy Star's lead singer, Hope Sandoval, adds fuel to it on the new "Among My Swan." Sandoval sings softly in the same five-note range; she is not a riot-girl screamer or an R&B sap. Most of the time, she sings so quietly one begins to wonder if she's afraid to be recorded. This shyness seems to be a front Mazzy Star uses because after listening to its latest release, you'll realize that the whole project is an attempt to maintain the image of being wistful and nubile. It isn't a convincing prop, despite the picture inside the cover of Sandoval, braless in a tight sweater. Do not let the title names "Take Everything" or "Roseblood" mislead you into believing this will be a man-trashing album. The only angry song on this album is "Still Cold," but Hope never even raises her voice at the heartless subject of the song. "Among My Swan" sounds like Joan Baez, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan all got together and recorded a handful of musical flops; ringing bells and amplifier feedback are painfully noticeable on "Disappear," while "Cry" sounds eerily like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." There is no musical diversity on this album. Virtually all of these songs sound the same, which is one of the worst things a musician can do. It's one thing to have a trademark sound, but if a songwriter never explores other concepts, he can just about kiss his career goodbye. Since Hole's original bass player, Jill Emery, is a member of Mazzy Star, it's surprising these songs are so dull. Unless you can relate to Mazzy Star's work, you'll probably just listen to "Among My Swan" twice and then toss it into your CD tower, forgetting about it forever. Better luck next time. Carrie Burrows, 16, attends Central High School. Her music review appears every other week. You may write to: Back Talk Music Reviewer, The Fresno Bee, Fresno, CA 93786. [©1997 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.] January 3, 1997 Dayton Daily News Mazzy Star: Among My Swan (alternative) Reviewed by Ron Rollins For their third outing as Mazzy Star, singer Hope Sandoval and instrumentalist David Roback present Among My Swan (Capitol), which sounds pretty much like their first two outings. This gloomy pair specializes in dense stories of love lost, sung by Sandoval in a waifish whisper, while Roback dampens slow rural melodies with moody undertones. What results are meandering compositions that are distinctive but dreary - like a beautiful Victorian house with the same dark wallpaper in every room. Mazzy Star deserve credit for sounding different, but also need to freshen their sound before we fall asleep applauding. ©1997 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.
	November 27, 1997 Glasgow University Guardian Mazzy Star: Among My Swan Modern life is rubbish. Relationships only end in disaster. There is no God. All is heartache and loss, desolation and pain. It's always raining. Wa-hey! It's the return of Mazzy Star! Hope Sandoral and David Roback, the dark gods of terminal misery, are back and by the looks of things they haven't been popping the prozac either. 'Among My Swan' begins where the million-selling 'So Tonight That I Might See' left off: namely lots of bleak, sombre tales about broken relationships set to minimalist acoustic guitar; though to be fair they've filled out their sound somewhat with the addition of strings and harmonica. As ever, the Mazzy Star trademark is Sandoval's hauntingly beautiful vocals. Wallow in it when your Serotin level is running low but be warned: never mind Ozzy, this is suicide music. (7/10) Ken Fallon
	Ontario University The Queen's University Mazzy Star: Among My Swan Rating: * * * (of five) By Andrew Sneddon After two great albums and the ethereal hit, “Fade Into You,” a lot was expected of Mazzy Star’s third release. Among My Swan does not fully deliver. The album features a band more comfortable with itself than on its earlier CDs: The musical mainstays — Hope Sandoval’s voice and the thick wash of music — are still present. Additions include touches of harmonica, violin, and accordion — little ornamental features which provide variety without subverting that which is distinctively Mazzy. The raw feel of the first album is gone; so is the cool, weird depth of the second, except for “Umbilical,” which sounds like Patti Smith crossed with the Doors. High points include the drops of bluesy guitar on “Disappear,” the opener. The country touch on “I’ve Been Let Down” is different from the Mazzy Star mold, a nice change from the clouds of slow blues. The sparing use of acoustic guitar (a la “Five String Serenade”) is gone, quietly replaced by the organ foundation of “Look On Down From The Bridge.” I doubt there’s a hit single here, but face it — “Fade Into You” was a surprise hit at best, a wonderful anomaly given mainstream musical tastes. Among My Swan is solid, eminently listenable blues-crafting, unspectacular but admirable.
	iMusic online Mazzy Star: Among My Swan by Miss Molly "Among My Swan" is the third release from the dreamy, Los Angeles-based duo Mazzy Star, coming as a follow-up to their 1993 release "So Tonight That I Might See." Produced by guitarist David Roback and co-produced by vocalist Hope Sandoval, the album contains exactly what we have come to expect from Mazzy Star - mesmerizing, psychedelic, hypnotic tracks, filled with distant-sounding, melancholy, ethereal vocals - but not much beyond that. On this latest release, Roback and Sandoval stick pretty much to the tried-and-true formula that brought them so much success with "So Tonight That I Might See"; the end result being that while "Among My Swan" is pleasing enough, in the final analysis, it comes across as just a whole lot more of the same. The 12 tracks on "Among My Swan" are slow-moving, moody and atmospheric, with vocals that emerge as though from the depths of some mysteriously soothing, surreal, trance-like stupor. Notable tracks include "Flowers In December" the first single off the album, which features beautiful, forlorn-sounding harmonica work by Sandoval; "Umbilica," (sic) a track that begins with murmuring, indistinct vocals only to give way to some searing, psychedelic, acid-laden guitarwork; and "I've Been Let Down" a number as near to a foot-stomping country tune as you could hope to get from a couple of trippy, sadcore alterna-rockers from LA. [ ©1996 iMusic, inc. - all rights reserved.] MusicMatch Mazzy Star: Among My Swan Mazzy Star, where once they emitted a unique sound among the angst-ridden and alternative, have now become a parody of themselves. Hope Sandoval continues her monotonous elegies, rarely rising or lowering an octave, rarely touching on any subject remotely cheerful. For example, the most uptempo track, gleefully titled "I've Been Let Down," offers this pearl of positivity: "Make me feel like I belong to you/make me feel it even if it isn't true." While this is certainly a trademark Sandoval sentiment (she writes all of the lyrics), at least on the band’s two previous efforts - the magnificent She Hangs Brightly and the somber yet gritty So Tonight That I Might See - they were couched in diversely charming melodies. "Disappear" sets the drab tone for the new album; while the two previous albums’openers were equally dour - "Halah" immediately demanded attention with its infectious, shuffling rhythm, and "Fade into You" rocked you into submission like a sad lullaby - She Hangs Brightly had the luxury of introducing something new, while So Tonight That I Might See had the excuse of evening out tendencies from the first record. Among My Swan has no such defense. This should have been the grand, artistic maturation of Mazzy Star. Instead, the music is, dare I say it, derivative. "Still Cold" is an amalgam of several early '70s FM rock bands; "Roseblood" borrows heavily from Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"; on "Umbilical," everything falls apart as Sandoval drones on incoherently over a cheap rhythmic imitation of the Velvet Underground, and the entire album has the feel of a bad Neil Young record - if there is such a thing. Only "Flowers in December" comes close to the wistful allure of the first two records, and despite Among My Swan's many shortcomings, those two efforts are still worth owning. ~ Scott Lenz [MusicMatch online] October 29, 1996 Allstar Magazine Mazzy Star: Among My Swan allstar rating: 5 In the Loch Ness depths of moody, psychedelic pop, L.A.-based musician David Roback has always risen above his contemporaries because of his ability to steal riffs whole while straightfacedly proclaiming bubblegum truths. From his days as the leader of s-l-o-w tripmaster monkeys Rain Parade in the early '80s through his work with the strong-throated, mystically-inclined chanteuse Kendra Smith in the band Clay Allison (which later changed its name to Opal), Roback revealed a God-given knack for delivering the contact-high and connecting with the right musicians. So when Kendra left Opal in the midst of a 1987 tour, Roback just instantly found himself a younger, more pliable rock goddess chick to spill high school poetry onto his musical lava lamp. Enter Hope Sandoval, a stand-in for Kendra--like no one was gonna notice. Mazzy Star's lukewarm 1993 second disc So Tonight That I Might See sold a lot of records due largely to Kevin Kerslake's video for "Fade Into You," all color-saturated and pretty, with Sandoval's perky tits and Lolita lips the main attraction on the deserted highway in the video. But on Swan, Hope is too bored or tired to actually sing. She can barely manage to even croon (as much as the sound of air escaping from a balloon can approximate a croon). Sandoval sings the viewpoint of the spoiled-brat with nothing- in- the- world- to- do--the kind of person who has her own swans, one supposes, or at least thinks a lot about having her own swans. Sandoval's ur-submissive tenor is breathy, like it just might be the last one she decides to take, which might be sexy to some people, the way dandies grooved on paintings of Ophelia floatin' down that river a hundred years ago. Which means this music is fine if you're laying on the grass looking at the butterflies dance, about to fall asleep, or if you've never heard any of the many things like it before. And most of these songs sound really cool--there's even some decent harmonica playing on "Flowers In December" and a very interesting use of the pedal steel on some other song, and submerged fuzz is everywhere like flies at a picnic. But Swan is nothing Mr. Roback hasn't done much better before, ten years ago, with a brighter Nico at his side. -- Mike McGonigal [© 1996, 1997 allstarmag.com, LLC] "allstar, the better online music magazine at http://www.allstarmag.com/" Rolling Stone - December 9, 1993 So Tonight That I Might See Rating: * * 1/2 Mazzy Star’s spacey fusion of old blues, creepy psychedelia and down-and-out country & western could’ve proved as unpleasant as the combined effects of cheap whisky, magic-mushroom tea and black coffee. But the West Coast duo neutralized the weird mix into cool, laid-back ballads for their highly acclaimed 1990 debut, She Hangs Brightly. Mazzy’s follow-up, So Tonight That I Might See, spaces off into even hazier dreamscapes that are so relaxed it makes the Cowboy Junkies seem wired. Hope Sandoval’s vocals echo and waver throughout Tonight as if they were bouncing off the walls of an old, abandoned mansion. Her voice, which rarely peaks or dips, flows in long, languid sighs over reeling background effects by partner and producer David Roback. In “She’s My Baby,” he spins a web of sheer, trippy feedback under simple acoustic guitar while dragging Mazzy’s already slow pace to a crawl. The anesthetized sounds wind out beneath a blanket of foggy production. While this is all intriguing at first, Tonight grows increasingly monotonous. The muffled “Mary of Silence” nods off into opiated drifts of organ, while in “Five String Serenade,” Sandoval’s fuzzed-out voice drones to whispery guitar and trancy violin. The songs are pretty but too hollow to allow for real feeling. Slowpoke country guitar wilts, slides and moans over the sparse tambourine shakes of “Fade Into You” yet never comes to life. Even the dusty and resonant sounds of pipe organ in “Blue Light” and the bluesy saunter of “Wasted” dissipate before reaching the gut or the soul. It’s strange. Even though So Tonight That I might See incorporates many of the same warm elements that made Billie Holiday bloom and Gram Parsons bleed, it still winds up feeling as dull and disconnected as a lone junkie at a crowded party. – Lorraine Ali. (Thanks to Jennifer for contributing this piece.)