Adventures in Your Own Backyard
| Adventures in Your Own Backyard | ||||
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| Studio album by Patrick Watson | ||||
| Released | April 16, 2012 | |||
| Genre | Chamber pop, folk | |||
| Length | 47:51 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Patrick Watson chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Adventures in Your Own Backyard | ||||
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 Patrick Watson Adventures on YouTube. The first in the band's web series, this video was filmed in Rouyn-Noranda in September 2011 and released online in April 2012. |
| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 71/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    |
| Consequence of Sound | |
| Edmonton Journal | |
| The Gazette (Montreal) | |
| The Globe and Mail | |
| The Grid | 6/10 |
| The Guardian | |
| La Presse | |
| Now | |
| Toronto Star | |
Adventures in Your Own Backyard is the fourth studio album by Canadian musician Patrick Watson, released in April 2012. It is the band's follow-up to the Polaris Music Prize-nominated 2009 release Wooden Arms, but by comparison is a musically simpler and more emotional album.
Adventures in Your Own Backyard was recorded almost entirely in a home studio next door to Watson's apartment in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec. The location was chosen for several reasons: the band wanted to return to the city after several years of touring, they felt that they would produce their best work by avoiding the time constraint and stress of recording in a professional studio, and it also allowed Watson to care for his two young children in between recording sessions. According to drummer Robbie Kuster, the relaxed and informal environment "really let [the band] dig in to the writing and the arranging" of the album. However, the album's title refers to more than just the physical location of where it was recorded; as Watson explains,
"We did record it in our backyard, so there’s that aspect, but to me, backyard means the people you have around in the back of your head, not where you have your barbecues. Everyone has their own definition of what a backyard means, and I also think that after seeing so much while travelling, it was exotic to come home and pay attention to the details of where we live."
Though the band is named after its lead singer, Watson, he maintains that "when people say 'Patrick Watson' I don’t think of me... I think of an entity" and has cited the track "Morning Sheets" as an example of a song whose tune was written by someone else (Kuster and Mishka Stein).
In 2011, the band had already revealed that they planned to release an album sometime in the next year, but the title, track listing, release dates and tour dates were not officially announced until January 25, 2012. The track "Into Giants" was also released for streaming online and later officially made available for purchase as a single on February 21, 2012. In anticipation of the album's release, American music magazine Paste named Patrick Watson one of "10 International Acts to Watch for in 2012".
On March 15, the band played at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Texas, where Rolling Stone magazine named them among the 25 "can't-miss acts" of the festival.National Public Radio hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton were in attendance and reacted very favourably to the band's performance; Hilton was moved to tears by what he called a "magical" moment that was his "most profound... of the day", while Boilen called it the best show of the festival and predicted the album would be one of the best of 2012.
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