Obsidian (Baths album)

Will Wiesenfield started work on some tracks of Obsidian before his debut album Cerulean. During touring and promotion of his first album, he became seriously ill with a serious case of E. coli. Wiesenfield said he "got really sad and sort of felt this momentum to try and make this darker record". He commented that behind the music, "there’s a very distorted, raw state of mind" and explained that "it's this dichotomy. It's pop music, but it’s tragic and dark.”[5]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.4/10[6]
Metacritic	76/100[7]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[8]
Clash	8/10[9]
Consequence of Sound	[10]
DIY	7/10[11]
Exclaim!	9/10[12]
Fact	[13]
PopMatters	[14]
Pitchfork	8.6/10[1]
Slant Magazine	[15]
Sputnikmusic	4.0/5[16]

Obsidian received positive reviews from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, based on 22 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[17] Ian Cohen of Pitchfork praised the album saying "the gregarious and genial Wiesenfeld has created a more subversive work by getting uncomfortably close to pop."[18] Vincent Pollard rated the album 9 out of 10, while writing in his review that "Obsidian is a gorgeous suite of electronic pop songs that will draw you in and stay with you for days on end."[12] Slant Magazine described the music on the album as IDM.[15] PopMatters's Robin Smith stated that Obsidian is a "self-sufficient synth-pop record in the vein of the Postal Service’s Give Up, ploughing through its songs and laying his beats as paths for stories."[14]

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Obsidian.[19]

• Obsidian at Discogs (list of releases)