''The Great Pretenders'' is the second album by Los Angeles band

Mini Mansions Mini Mansions are an American band founded by Zach Dawes, Tyler Parkford, and Queens of the Stone Age bassist Michael Shuman. Mini Mansions' style has been compared to The Beatles, Elliott Smith, and Fountains of Wayne (though this comparison ha ...

. It was released on March 23, 2015. The album cover alludes to the cover of the

Voyager Golden Record The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for ...

Reception

''The Great Pretenders'' received great acclaim from contemporary music 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 normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album 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 84, based on 7 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim".

Track listing

Personnel

Personnel adapted from ''The Greater Pretenders'' liner notes. Mini Mansions *

Zach Dawes Zachary Edwin Dawes (born July 2, 1985) is an American musician, producer, engineer, and technician, best known as the bassist for the bands Mini Mansions and The Last Shadow Puppets. He has also made contributions to music by Brian Wilson, Lan ...

Tyler Parkford Tyler Parkford is an American musician, best known as the keyboardist and vocalist for Los Angeles-based band, Mini Mansions. He is also one half of the lounge pop duo Mister Goodnite, and a touring member of the British indie rock band Arctic ...

Michael Shuman Michael Jay Shuman (born August 20, 1985), also known as Mikey Shoes,Michael Shuman biography
th ...

Additional musicians *

Brian Wilson Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude, and m ...

- vocals (track 5) *

Alex Turner Alexander David Turner (born 6 January 1986) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is well known as the frontman and principal songwriter of the rock band Arctic Monkeys, with whom he has released seven albums. He ...

- vocals (track 6) Production *

- production *

T Bone Burnett Joseph Henry "T Bone" Burnett III (born January 14, 1948) is an American record producer, guitarist and songwriter. He rose to fame as a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band during the 1970s. He has received multiple Grammy awards for his work in film ...

- executive producer * Woody Jackson - co-production * Michael Harris - production, engineering * Sean O'Brien - engineering (tracks 1, 3, 6, and 9) * Wesley Seidman - engineering (track 5) *

Gavin Lurssen Gavin Lurssen is an American mastering engineer. He owns Lurssen Mastering in Hollywood, California.John Congleton John Congleton is an American Grammy Award-winning record producer, engineer, mixer, writer and musician. In addition to his production work, Congleton has fronted the alternative rock band the Paper Chase, and writes music for a newer project e ...

- mixing * Cian Riordan - mixing (track 10) Artwork * Clay Russell Lerner - design * Kendrick Brinson - back cover photography * Neil Krug - insert photography *

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

- cover photography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Pretenders, The 2015 albums Mini Mansions albums Albums recorded at Electro-Vox Recording Studios