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MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)

The likes of "Little White Lies" (lost love as spirit death), "Straight Into a Storm" (found love as rock and roll life), and "Song About a Man" (grandpa) translate perfectly into their long-diddled dialect.

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Uncut

McCauley's time might just have arrived.

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Delusions of Adequacy

Taken for what it is: strong folk leanings, with a sweet country shuffle, delivered with some of the best lyrics of the year, they all make for one brilliant combination.

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PopMatters

From its swampy backwoods grooves to its alpha-male protagonists, Born on Flag Day is a fundamentally, rivetingly nostalgic album.

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Under The Radar

Born On Flag Day is sure to be slightly damned by Deer Tick's earlier success; it's no radical step forward, but McCauley was already on a good path. [Summer 2009, p.74]

Rolling Stone

McCauley sounds no less lonely, staring down abandonment and death in gentle waltzes and country-rock rambles.

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The New York Times

Mr. McCauley is a committed formalist and a defiant singer; he loves hating himself, and he’s thorough about it. His band mates (Andrew Grant Tobiassen on guitar, Christopher Dale Ryan on bass, Dennis Michael Ryan on drums) smartly give him room to gasp, but maybe he’s got a future without them as a Nashville songwriter.

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All Music Guide

By sacrificing grit, some of the charm that made the debut a success is lost along the way, but the sleeker production is only a minor setback and some of the songs onboard are Deer Tick's best thus far.

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Spin

As deft revivalists of “country” in all its forms, the four guys in Deer Tick are entitled to wallow. Luckily, though, their second album delivers doses of pop buoyancy.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Unlike "War Elephant," which resembled an indie band’s stab at country, Born On Flag Day suggests a headlong dive into the canon, with little irony and varying results.

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cokemachineglow

I want to stress one last time, post-catch, that these aren’t terrible songs, nor do they add up to a terrible album. But the net effect is nevertheless one of tedium and disappointment, a partial reminder of "War Elephant's" potential instead of an attempt to realize it.

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Dusted Magazine

McCauley writes within genre, embraces its trappings, and emerges with completely acceptable results.

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Q Magazine

His alt-country songs bristle with classic influences form Gram Parsons to John Fogerty to Steve Eerle. New dog, old tricks. [Jan 2010, p. 122]

Filter

The band is not exactly daytripping here and there is a great fervor in what they do, but the fruit is not quite ripe. [Summer 2009, p.102]

Pitchfork

Deer Tick's primary shortcoming is that the band evokes authentically gutty music from the past without noticeably inserting much of themselves into the equation, achieving superficial mimesis and comforting recognition while failing to put their own stamp on their creations.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ward T. gave it a9:
Pitchfork are a bunch of idiots. This is a great, gritty alt-country album, saturated with classic rock influences and touch of '50's rockabilly, simple but full of straight-from-the-heart songs, sung out loud. You cannot love this genre and not love this album. Come on, give it a try. Just because that tool Brian Williams likes them doesn't mean they're not actually great! And a bad review from Pitchfork - increasingly meaningless in general - must be taken with a grain of salt here, since the singer has openly called the website a "steaming pile of shit." After this review, it's hard not to see his point.

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Born On Flag Day

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