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"Yours to Keep" the debut solo album by The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, was released October 9, 2006 in the UK through Rough Trade Records and was released in North America on March 6, 2007 through New Line Records/Scratchie Records.
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 72, based on 26 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
User Album Review
Yours To Keep’ owes less to the drainpiped testosterone of the Ramones and the Velvets and more to the quirky indie songcraft of The Flaming Lips and The Magnetic Fields, even if it lacks the Lips’ cinematic scope. Hammond’s voice, a high-pitched nasal twang, might not have the drunken cool of Casablancas, but he’s at least decipherable, and, on occasion, heart-swooningly sweet. On ‘Call An Ambulance’, a sprightly, Beatles-y tale of unrequited love, he even engages in the kind of terminally uncool whistling that would normally see him strung up by his intestines and paraded through the streets as a punk-rock heretic.
But let’s give the Brillo-haired one his due. This album is far better than it has any right to be; an intimate, frequently beautiful and consistently surprising record that gets better with every listen. It’s testament to Hammond’s talent that at no point during ‘Yours To Keep’ will you find yourself longing for Julian Casablancas’ brooding voice, or for a screeching Nick Valensi-esque solo to kick in. Suffice to say, if you take it at face value and don’t go looking for the fourth Strokes album, this is a record to fall in love with.
Reviewed by Barry Nicolson for nme.com.
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