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Critic's Review
MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide
The Like's debut album, Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?, has nothing to do with their teenage counterparts and a little something do with their famous fathers. It's only natural that one would consider the work of Mitchell Froom, Pete Thomas, and Tony Berg while sizing up the dream pop-influenced sound of the Like. However, this band delivers an impressive 13-song set that's reliably original and streamlined. Vocalist Z Berg sounds older and wiser than her youthful years, a near vocal ringer for Harriet Wheeler and Chrissie Hynde. Her (and the band's) girlish confidence is both endearing and smart. The pearly punk strands in "What I Say and What I Mean" and the dawning, layered acoustic guitars and lush harmonies of "Once Things Look Up" capture the Like's maturer presentation. Their range of influences are fluidly spread throughout, particularly on the earthy indie rock highlights of "Too Late" and "We Are Lost." "The One" and "Mrs. Actually," two daydreamy, brokenhearted moments, add to the shimmering beautiful canvas of Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? Producer Wendy Melvoin had the right touch with this album, empowering the Like to feel good about standing apart from everything else.
Critic Blurbs
""Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking" is the all female trios call to arms, and brings back memories of Kim Deals post Pixies band, the Breeders mixed with Britpop mavericks Sleeper."
May 25, 2006
"But maybe Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? is all it professes to be: misunderstanding, indecision, ambiguity."
- Rachel Khong | Nov 7, 2005
"Think of them as the anti-Sleater-Kinney, an all female trio who deal not in rage, politics and the rough edges of garage punk, but shimmering surfaces, smooth backing harmonies and the hallucinatory melodies best brought to fruition in the cozy confines of a sleek recording studio."
- Rob O'Connor | Sep 19, 2005
"The songs are stunning, emotionally complex, lyrically sophisticated, thoroughly arranged pop songs, in the tradition of The Pretenders, The Sundays, Ride, and countless other guitar rock bands that The Like touch upon but never mimic."
Sep 12, 2005
"...these Los Angelenos also write and play their own guitar-based tunes with an artful professionalism that belies their average age of nineteen."
- Barry Walters | Sep 8, 2005
