Monday 18 May 2009, Drowned In Sound, by Luke Slater (9 out of 10)

Delightfully pleasant indie pop from the Glasgow seven-piece, possibly even exceeding efforts on their last record Profit In Your Poetry. The production is perfect and John Blain Hunt's words (both melodically and lyrically) float care-freely through not quite a sea but a calm lake of guitars, strings, pianos and all manner of accompaniment. That warm fuzzy feeling when something AMAZING happens - React Or Die is strikingly close to the musical equivalent of it.

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Sunday 3 May 2009, the Sunday Telegraph, by James Delingpole (5 out of 5)

I'm worried that if I give it five stars you'll go out and buy it and sniff 'Hmm, this is a bit slight' - because it does initially sound quite fey and fragile and it's only a measly half-hour long. Trust me, though, it's a grower and a joy. Butcher Boy are fronted by a thirtysomething Scots poet named John Blain Hunt, whose sweet vocals, gnomic, off-kilter lyrics, neat, folk-tinged arrangements and restrained but gently lilting melodies call to mind Belle and Sebastian at their best.

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Tuesday 14 April 2009, Yahoo! Music, by Julian Marszalek (8 out of 10)

Poor old indie's taken something of a battering of late. With guitars being shunted out of the limelight by vintage analogue synths, it's not hard to see why the genre hijacked by any number of corporate/hair/landfill* indie chancers (delete pejorative term as applicable and per personal taste) concerned about the dwindling state of their pensions in light of the global banking crisis and building careers on the flimsiest of musical propositions (hello, White Lies et al), is in a state of flux. Some might even say death throes yet those hankering for the days of anoraks, fanzines and sensitivities - the very roots of the post-C86 strain of the genre, lest we forget - will find much to gladden the heart with this, the second full-length release from Glasgow's Butcher Boy.

A pithy listen - ten tracks at just over thirty minutes - React Or Die is a more reflective experience than its predecessor, Profit In Your Poetry. The sea-shanty quality of opener When I'm Asleep is almost mantra-like in its retreat from a world that offers less security and more terror yet this is far from a solipsistic experience. Carve A Pattern follows up on the rear to offer something approaching jauntiness and a spring in the step.

Throughout, singer-guitarist John Blain Hunt's delicate brogue maintains a fine balance between drama and hysteria; it always sounds like he's on the brink of breaking down in floods of tears yet has the dignity to hold back and use an articulate turn of phrase instead (see "Because it's always winter in this sunny room when you're gone," on Why I Like Babies).

The playing throughout is a joy. Flanked by cellos, violins, mandolins, guitars and horns, Butcher Boy dance on glass with a delicate grace and ease. The ominous cello of This Kiss Will Marry Us is greeted by an instrumentation that remains stoic despite a quivering bottom lip. Like the best folk music, it ebbs and flows to frame the lyrical picture within it; not a note wasted, not a word out of place.

Butcher Boy is an all-too rare commodity. This is music that's prepared to meditate and contemplate rather than medicate and sedate. It's mature enough to confront its own feelings and emotions but not old enough to hector or bore. More importantly, it exists purely on its own terms. This is music that has to be made; this is music that reacts or dies.

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Friday 9 April 2009, the Times, the Case For Caledonian Independents by Pete Paphides (5 out of 5)

In the mid-1990s, with the Smiths and the bands that came in their wake long defunct, and after Oasis had given it the treatment, indie music as a strain of pop for people who read books and wore duffle coats had sussenly become an endangered species.

So, when Belle and Sebastian arrived in 1996, they represented a rearguard action for a marginalised aesthetic. As weapons go, such unabashed feyness was probably no more effective than those Tibetan monks who think meditation is a more powerful weapon than Chinese guns. But 13 years after the Smiths released This Charming Man, Belle and Sebastian re-emphasised the core values of indie pop. Now, another 13 years on, here's an album that will do it all over again.

If React Or Die feels like the result of all that history, thats no accident. Like Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, Butcher Boy's 34-year-old frontman John Blain Hunt gravitated from Ayrshire to Glasgow and spent years observing the city's music scene as an outsider. He was a published poet before meeting musicians who helped him turn his creations into the songs on Profit In Your Poetry, his debut album in 2004. But as if to formalise his transition to proper frontman, his group's second album begins with When I'm Asleep - little more than a single couplet repeated over a fine rain of cello and mandolins.

Beyond the opening-credits sweep of that song, Hunt's words fill the void where the important stuff between friends and lovers inevitably remains unsaid. You're Only Crying For Yourself is a case in point, a meeting between two changed souls attempting in the face of circumstances to understand each other. With the halting metre of a Caledonian Jake Thackray Hunt sings, "The face in the photograph would send me home but you won't."

If there's tenderness in the tension he describes, it works the other way too. "We'd jaw for a month but we're such kittenish drunks that it makes it worse," he sings on This Kiss Will Marry Us, before Aoife Magee's violin swirls like a thermal current beneath him.

Here and elsewhere, the pretty precision of Butcher Boy's arrangements suggest several turntable miles spent alternately listening to the 1960s French pop dandy Michel Polnareff and, on Clockwork, the Charlie Brown pianist Vince Guaraldi. That Hunt should have grown up on a diet of Peanuts strips seems appropriate given the sentiments of songs such as A Better Ghost, where much as the hapless rounde-headed kid might once have done, he utters "You're haunted by a better ghost than me."

And despite Sunday Bells beng the only tune here that runs fast enough to break into a sweat, every song in React Or Die elicits a thrill beyond speed or volume. The secret ingredient here is the monastic commitment that the most beautiful pop songs divine from those given the job of playing them. By filling up an album with them, Butcher Boy have set a standard against which every other release this year must surely be judged.

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Monday 6 April 2009, the Scotsman, by Fiona Shepherd (4 out of 5)

For some years, Butcher Boy mainman John Blain Hunt ran a club in Glasgow called National Pop League, celebrating the best in indie pop. So it's just as well he exhibits such a grasp of elegantly crafted songwriting now he has turned to making music of his own.

Belle and Sebastian comparisons are unavoidable. The second Butcher Boy album, like their debut, Profit In Your Poetry, is unabashed west-end indie - romantic, delicate, literate and sweetly melodic - and has been promoted with a tour of bowling clubs.

But there are also nods to Joe Meek on You're Only Crying For Yourself, folky Fairport flavour on Anything Other Than Kind and a mix of Hammond textures and Kraftwerkian keyboards on the relatively pacey Sunday Bells.

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Monday 1 April 2009, Teletext Planet Sound, by John Earls (8 out of 10)

Part-funded by the Scottish Arts Council, the Glaswegians' second album expands their literate melancholy.

Intricately detailed gloomy chamber music, Tindersticks are the obvious comparison, but there's more depth to John Blain Hunt's tender vocals.

There's more variety here, the band learning to swing and race among the enveloping embraces. Most importantly, it's one to lose yourself in.

*

April 2009, Clash magazine, by (7 out of 10)

Butcher Boy's debut Profit In Your Poetry was lapped up by lovers of fey indie on its release - and its follow up has put John Blain Hunt and co in danger of spreading the word even further. React Or Die is painted in bolder, stronger brush strokes, bringing widescreen sheen to songs such as You're Only Crying For Yourself. Hunt's poetic musings remain as florid as ever, now matched by a melodic confidence that outshines his previously shy delivery. The spirit of Arthur Lee has edged out that of Stuart Staples, brass and strings singeing the fringes of tracks such as Sunday Bells and This Kiss Will Marry Us. This is twee pop delivered with a Glasgow kiss.

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Saturday 28 March 2009, New Musical Express, by Gavin Haynes (8 out of 10)

As Stuart Murdoch continues to dick around with his musical and the Belle and Sebastian sabbatical drags into its third year, Butcher Boy return to seize the demographic marked 'young, Glaswegian, twee'. Their second album serves up what all good indie-pop comebacks do: more of the same. In their case, this means piano ballads along the lines of B&S's We Rule The School and richly plotted arrangements of cellos and horns, regret, childlike wonder and the lilting sadness of a foggy morning, all swirling into something self-deprecatingly lovely. "I gather books and I read with missionary zeal," whispers John Blain Hunt on Clockwork. We suspect he's not really into horra-hop.

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