''Buds'' is the third

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American band

Ovlov Ovlov is an American rock band from Newtown, Connecticut. The band is led by guitarist/vocalist Steve Hartlett, usually accompanying him, his brothers Theo and Jon on drums and bass, respectively, and guitarist Morgan Luzzi. Steve Hartlett is a m ...

. It was released on November 19, 2021, by Exploding in Sound Recordings.

Release

On September 22, 2021, Ovlov announced the release of their third studio, along with the first single "Land of Steve-O".

Critical reception

''Buds'' was met with "universal acclaim" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 83 based on 5 reviews. In a review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, critic reviewer Tim Sendra said: "For 2021's ''Buds'' Steve Hartlett dug through old demos to find songs that were deemed too light at the time, plus he wrote a few that fit the brief. The result is a little lighter than ''TRU'', but it's hardly featherweight. There are plenty of blown-out guitars and ripping leads, the rhythm section still pounds like they are trying to escape a locked room, and Harlett ladles lots of goopy melancholy into the melodies. Buds totally sounds and feels like Ovlov." Brian Coney of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...

'' explained: "In the space of 25 minutes, ''Buds'' continues to navigate loss while sounding largely at peace with the world. With brothers Jon and Theo Hartlett on bass and drums and childhood friend Morgan Luzzi on guitar, Hartlett crafts Ovlov's breeziest record yet. It's still wooly and doused in fuzz, but the band sounds more lucid than ever before." At '' Paste'', the album received a rating of 7.4 out of 10, with reviewer Ben Salmon noting: "On their third album ''Buds'', Ovlov scale back the squall a bit and bring those tunes to the forefront. Don't misunderstand: Hartlett and his crew still know how to dial up the fuzz, as they do with great gusto on the album's punky, 98-second opening track, "Baby Shea". But on Buds, they deploy it with more restraint, giving space to cleaner tones that jangle and chime, and to Hartlett's charming melodies.

Track listing

References

External links

* * 2021 albums {{2020s-album-stub