Pinpoint Best 2012 on Grimes

#23 Arriving attached to a “post-internet” genre-tag and looking very much like a hipster with a daft haircut, Claire Boucher’s third full-length outing as Grimes had no right to capture our imaginations quite like it did...full article here

Pitchfork Best 2012 on Grimes

#6 Cynics and traditionalists have it tough in today’s populist free-for-all. This year has lobbed a spectacular softball at them, though: a musically untrained young Canadian woman named Claire Boucher who creates bizarro synth-pop with user-friendly Apple software and claims to draw inspiration from anything and everything...full article here

Pop Matters Best 2012 on Grimes

#11 The Internet has facilitated rummaging through the historical and cultural vaults like no other technology before it. In the 21st century, musicians have had an unfortunate tendency to respond to such unfettered accessibility to pop culture’s detritus by performing simple grab-and-paste appropriations or outright pastiche, manifesting a sort of exhibitionist curatism that says more about their tastes than what they are actually trying to do with the wares available to them. Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes, does more than that...full article here

Pretty Much Amazing Best 2012 on Grimes

#8 On Visions, her third record as Grimes, the 24-year-old musical mad scientist Claire Boucher meticulously created an entire, heavily considered science-fiction universe in thirteen songs...full article here

Resident Advisor Best 2012 on Grimes

#12 With Visions, Grimes cut through the fog of her earlier work, and the result was the year's strangest bona fide pop hit...full article here

AllMusic Best 2012 on Grimes

#1 On Visions, Claire Boucher honed the mix of little-girl-lost vocals and dark synth-scapes she'd forged on her first two Grimes albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, into something just as unique, but far catchier. full article here

Spinner Best of 2012 on Grimes

#10 "Pop" is an amorphous label that has evolved far beyond its originating designation of popular. Grimes is not exactly Britney. Your mom does not know who she is (at least not yet)...full article here

Sputnikmusic on Grimes

#15 I don’t really consider myself qualified to discuss all the influences that Visions chews up and digests and Claire Boucher as an artist even less so. Frankly, the term “post-Internet” makes me want to blow my brains out, while her story of sailing down the Mississippi on a rickety, soon-to-fail houseboat with a bounty of chickens and potatoes is so bluntly DIY as to be unbearably contrived...full article here

Stereogum Best of 2012 on Grimes

#26 Visions (4AD/Arbutus)

Tiny Mix Tapes Best of 2012 on Grimes

#11 Let them be, they can’t shut up. Nor should they. You should calm down. No need to be angry. We can be far more than this… No, we have been. Even when we were excessive...full article here

Treble Best of 2012 on Grimes

#8 There’s a reason why Grimes has been so highly regarded this year, and it isn’t just because she resembles a tiny pastel-haired pixie that you’d want to slip inside your pocket...full article here

Pitchfork Best New Tracks on Grimes

Grimes: "Genesis"

If first single  "Oblivion" wasn't a clear enough signal, Montreal artist Claire Boucher's music has only garnered more polish with time. "Genesis" is the latest well-oiled salvo from her upcoming third solo album as Grimes , Visions , and like "Oblivion" it rides a chunky abrasive beat with an equally thickset synth bassline. But this one's all about the layering: drenched in reverb, Boucher's distinctive squeaks and childlike cooing jump from an Annie Lennox -esque lower register to her more familiar fairytale cadence to match the colourful decoration around her. Pianos loop, synths twinkle, all .... [from Visions ; out 02/21/12 in the U.S and 03/12/12 in Europe via 4AD and Arbutus in Canada]

Amoeba "Music We Like" on Grimes

Grimes, Visions (CD) Grimes’ Visions is the rare pop album that feels like you’re traversing through the private mind of its creator. Claire Boucher coos and chirps her way over synth loops and dance beats not unlike your average pop star, only her vocals and song construction are far more mysterious and dreamlike, almost like....more at amoeba.com

Buzz Bands LA on Grimes

Canadian electro songstress Grimes will join indie-pop and folk luminaries Grouplove , Milo Greene , Cults and Soko on the bill for this year's Make Music Pasadena , the free daylong festival that draws more than 30,000 to the City of Roses. The diverse bill also features electro-funk guru Dam-Funk , Cambodian psych-rockers Dengue Fever , French chanteuse Jessica Fichot and Mexican singer-songwriter Gustavo Galindo . MMP goes off from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, June 16, at various venues in and more here

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

Tweet Director David Dean Burkhart uses scenes from Godard’s 1965 film Alphaville . Download: Grimes- "Vanessa" more here

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

It's no easy feat to construct a tune that can punch you in the gut, than pick you back up, dust you off, and give you a kiss on the cheek. 'Oblivioin' the newest track from Grimes does just that. On one side you have a chunky and simple beat that provides a core, or some sort of grounding for the atmospheric vocals. If the instrumentation recalls a dingy club that you probably shouldn't be at, than the vocals are a polar opposite- innocent, dreamy, and naive. The combination of the two provide a unique texture giving the effect of more here

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

The newest track from Grimes (now a member of the 4AD family), "Genesis", seems to pick up right where "Obilivion" left off. The songs' backbone is an angular synth that seems clunky as it moves forward, but continues moving forward none the less. Surrounding the bass' angular edges is an atmosphere made up of Grimes' airy voice and eastern sounding keys that blissfully make their way up and down a scale. The contrasting sounds make the track easy to get lost in as it seems to force the mind to do summer-salts out of sheer joy or just more here

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

Tweet Director David Dean Burkhart uses scenes from Godard’s 1965 film Alphaville . Download: Grimes- "Vanessa" more at elbo.ws

Pitchfork Best Albums on Grimes

Album "Visions" scored 8.5

Grimes is the one-woman cyborg-pop project of Montreal's Claire Boucher. Visions, her compulsively listenable third album, mixes clean, Aphex Twin-esque atmospherics with the immediacy of straight-up ...

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

It's no easy feat to construct a tune that can punch you in the gut, than pick you back up, dust you off, and give you a kiss on the cheek. 'Oblivioin' the newest track from Grimes does just that. On one side you have a chunky and simple beat that provides a core, or some sort of grounding for the atmospheric vocals. If the instrumentation recalls a dingy club that you probably shouldn't be at, than the vocals are a polar opposite- innocent, dreamy, and naive. The combination of the two provide a unique texture giving the effect of more at elbo.ws

Quit Mumbling on Grimes

The newest track from Grimes (now a member of the 4AD family), "Genesis", seems to pick up right where "Obilivion" left off. The songs' backbone is an angular synth that seems clunky as it moves forward, but continues moving forward none the less. Surrounding the bass' angular edges is an atmosphere made up of Grimes' airy voice and eastern sounding keys that blissfully make their way up and down a scale. The contrasting sounds make the track easy to get lost in as it seems to force the mind to do summer-salts out of sheer joy or just more at elbo.ws

mySpoonful on Grimes

There is a methodical evolution taking place in the music Claire Boucher records under the name Grimes. In an increasingly crowded music marketplace where it’s easy to make an initial splash but just as easy to be swallowed up immediately after by the churning internet machine, artists are being pushed to grow and be creative, two things that seem like second nature for Grimes. With each release, she stretches her sound, shedding the negatives and enhancing the positives. Where she once seemed content to lure you into a mesmerized trance, she now seems just as likely to snap you out of it with engaging, avant-pop beats. Over time she has learned to harness her beautiful ballet of a voice, a glorious falsetto that often sounds like innocence being carried to its demise on a cold wind. With her most anticipated release looming next month, if 2012 is truly going to bring about the end of the world, Grimes could very well provide the soundtrack. more at myspoonful.com