Nourished By Time The Passionate Ones
Nourished By Time's The Passionate Ones arrives as a bruised, buoyant statement that stakes Marcus Brown's claim to a politics-tinged, 90s R'n'B and synth-pop fusion. Across professional reviews the record earns an 85.58/100 consensus score from 12 reviews, and critics consistently point to a handful of songs that do the heavy lifting: “9 2 5”, “BABY BABY”, “Max Potential”, “Automatic Love” and “It's Time” emerge as the best songs on The Passionate Ones for marrying big feelings with danceable grooves.
Reviewers praise the album's recurring themes of vulnerability, labor and romantic longing, noting how tracks such as “9 2 5” and “Max Potential” map working-life precarity onto grand, anthemic hooks while “BABY BABY” and “Automatic Love” fold tenderness into sardonic commentary. Critics agree the production blends house grooves, soulful R&B and 1980s/1990s pop references to create moments of widescreen nostalgia and intimate confession; several reviews single out “It's Time” and “Automatic Love” for their widescreen sweep and “9 2 5” for its celebratory tribute to the working dreamer.
While most professional reviews celebrate the album's conviction and emotional clarity, a few critics note that the synth textures occasionally overstay their welcome, producing a slightly cluttered second act. Overall the critical consensus suggests The Passionate Ones is both a stylistic leap and a socially minded pop record—worth investigating for anyone searching for the best tracks on The Passionate Ones or asking what critics say about Marcus Brown's most communal, resilient work yet.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Max Potential
11 mentions
"lead single “Max Potential” makes the risk of losing control into a stadium-sized chorus"— The A.V. Club
Automatic Love
8 mentions
"From its opening moments, The Passionate Ones soars."— The A.V. Club
9 2 5
12 mentions
"“9 2 5,” the album’s extended statement on labor, features a chopped-up vocal sample"— The A.V. Club
lead single “Max Potential” makes the risk of losing control into a stadium-sized chorus
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Automatic Love
Idiot In The Park
Max Potential
It's Time
Cult Interlude
9 2 5
Crazy People
Jojo
BABY BABY
Tossed Away
When The War Is Over
The Passionate Ones
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 13 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time expands on his honeyed RnB with The Passionate Ones, and the review makes clear that the best songs - notably “9 2 5” and “It’s Time” - capture its urgent thesis. The writer’s voice is admiring and exact: he celebrates how “9 2 5” bubbles with energetic samples while “It’s Time” opens widescreen nostalgia, both illustrating why they are the best tracks on The Passionate Ones. The narrative keeps that sardonic, incisive tone when praising the velvety baritone on “Idiot in the Park”, making clear which songs stand out and why they matter now.
Key Points
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“9 2 5” is the best song because it directly tackles the album’s central question with a bubbly, energetic production.
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The album’s core strengths are lush RnB melodies, nostalgic synth production, and incisive lyrical engagement with young adulthood and political awareness.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time arrives grand and battered on The Passionate Ones, and the best songs - notably “Automatic Love” and “Max Potential” - make that emotional theater feel earned. Gillis's prose celebrates Brown's guttural yelps and choral howls, saying the opener explodes into worship and that “Max Potential” risks glorious loss of control. The review highlights “Crazy People” as a standout where 808 iciness meets house piano, and it frames the title track as an ecstatic, Neptunes-esque gospel rejoinder. Overall the critic presents the album as a fuller, more secure statement that still bristles with righteous anger and vulnerability, answering who has made the best tracks on The Passionate Ones with clear enthusiasm.
Key Points
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The best song is the opener "Automatic Love" because it immediately "soars" and explodes into worship, showcasing Brown's singular voice.
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The album's strengths are its honed impressionistic lyricism, kaleidoscopic production, and a blend of righteous anger with newfound fullness and vulnerability.
Themes
Critic's Take
Marcus Brown’s Nourished By Time makes its point loudest on The Passionate Ones, where urgency and grimy materiality replace escapist haze. The review singles out “BABY BABY” for a wrenching moment when a muttered coo curdles into a cry, and it praises “Max Potential” as an anthemic, guitar-led declaration of love-as-martyrdom. This is not an album to dissociate to - it is enraged, tender, and insistently communal, with tracks like “9 2 5” arguing that survival is a shared fight. The best songs on The Passionate Ones therefore balance atmosphere with blunt, physical feeling, making “BABY BABY” and “Max Potential” the clearest highlights.
Key Points
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“BABY BABY” is the best song because a muttered coo becomes an agonizing, desperate cry that crystallizes the album’s themes.
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The album’s core strength is marrying airy, atmospheric textures with blunt, physical depictions of late-stage capitalist despair.
Themes
Re
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time folds soulful R&B into house grooves on The Passionate Ones, a jubilant message of resilience that makes tracks like “Automatic Love” and “The Passionate Ones” feel essential. The reviewer's phrasing is brisk and celebratory, noting the album's second-act confidence and buoyant energy. For listeners searching for the best songs on The Passionate Ones, “Automatic Love” emerges as an immediate highlight and the title track anchors the record's emotional payoff. The tone is upbeat and assured, treating these best tracks as both dancefloor-ready and defiantly hopeful for dystopian times.
Key Points
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The best song, “Automatic Love”, stands out as an immediate, jubilant highlight that exemplifies the album's resilient spirit.
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The album's core strengths are its blend of soulful R&B and house grooves and its upbeat message of resilience in dystopian times.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time feels most alive on the best songs of The Passionate Ones, particularly “Automatic Love” and “Tossed Away”, which marry devotion and ache with supple production. Rob Hakimian's writing celebrates Brown's ardour without sentimentality, noting how “Automatic Love” opens with retrofuturistic soul and “Tossed Away” deepens the emotional stakes with honeyed vocals. He also flags “BABY BABY” and “9 2 5” as vital: the former for its jagged, topical rush and the latter for its joyous tribute to the working dreamer. The result frames the album's best tracks as intimate, worldly and consistently stylish, the songs that most clearly answer who the Passionate Ones are.
Key Points
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Tossed Away is best because its honeyed vocals and troubled imagery make the emotional stakes land hardest.
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The album's core strengths are its heartfelt focus on passion and vulnerability, varied pop-soul production, and consistent storytelling.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time arrives with a bruised grandeur on The Passionate Ones, Marcus Brown turning spectacle into intimacy. The review elevates “Automatic Love” as an opening blast that transforms boyband platitudes into real jeopardy, and it praises “Max Potential” for its big 80s synth-rock sheen. It singles out “BABY BABY” as a witty, aloof single that undercuts drama with casual talk-singing, and crowns “9 2 5” a spirit-soaring song of the summer contender about artistic dreams versus day-job monotony. Overall the best songs on The Passionate Ones are those that mix theatrical production with urgent feeling, and those tracks are precisely the ones the review champions.
Key Points
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The best song is "Automatic Love" because it transforms pop platitudes into genuine jeopardy with blistering production.
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The album’s core strengths are cinematic production and unabashed romantic urgency that mix theatricality with emotional immediacy.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished by Time's The Passionate Ones feels like a leap forward precisely because Marcus Brown marries molten sincerity with sly, referential fun. The best songs - “Max Potential”, “9 2 5” and “BABY BABY” - show him balancing tenderness, social critique, and jolting invention, and they stake the claim for the album's most convincing moments. The record's charm is that it never flinches from its themes of work, dependence, and devotion, and those tracks crystallize why listeners ask, what are the best songs on The Passionate Ones? They are the ones that make you feel like you might tilt toward a new musical world.
Key Points
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The best song is "Max Potential" because its shimmering production and pointed lyrics crystallize the album's emotional thrust.
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The album's core strengths are its meld of sincerity and inventive production, and its engagement with work, dependence, and devotion.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time's The Passionate Ones feels like an intimate pep talk, and the best songs - “9 2 5”, “Baby Baby” and “Max Potential” - carry that message with irresistible hooks and political bite. The reviewer leans into Brown's knack for combining 1980s pop bombast and lo-fi charm, praising how “9 2 5” beams through with glittering piano while “Baby Baby” snaps with urgent, quotable lines. There are moments where the sticky synth web overstays its welcome, but the earnest celebration of collective spirit keeps the album buoyant and memorable.
Key Points
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“9 2 5” is best for its glittering piano hooks and rare moment of unbridled joy.
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The album’s core strength is marrying earnest, left-leaning politics with sticky, 1980s-inflected pop production.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time's The Passionate Ones brims with a simmering afterglow that makes the best songs impossible to ignore, notably “Automatic Love” and “BABY BABY”. Dom Lepore's tone is admiring and observant, pointing to Brown's grounded lyricism and spacious arrangements as why the best tracks on The Passionate Ones land so emotionally. The review highlights “Automatic Love” for its nervous keys and sensual promise, and praises “BABY BABY” as a bouncy, mosh-ready standout that still carries political weight. Overall the critic frames the album as triumphant and humane, celebrating songs that fuse lo-fi synthpop, R&B, and clear-eyed social conscience.
Key Points
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“Automatic Love” is best for its nervous-key intro that blossoms into sensual, freewheeling rhythms and compelling baritone.
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The album’s core strengths are its spacious arrangements, lyrical grounding in working-class concerns, and an optimistic yet realistic emotional throughline.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time's The Passionate Ones feels like a soulful manifesto, led by propulsive standouts such as “9 2 5” and “BABY BABY”. Patrick Gamble writes with warm admiration for Marcus Brown's preacherly magnetism, praising how “9 2 5” maps capitalism onto personal experience while “BABY BABY” swings from wry romance to a gut-punch political couplet. The best songs on The Passionate Ones balance mid-tempo R'n'B grooves and synth-pop sheen with sincere, urgent lyricism. If you want the best tracks on The Passionate Ones, start with “9 2 5” and “BABY BABY” for the clearest statement of the record's themes and strengths.
Key Points
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The best song, “9 2 5”, is best for its piano-led lament that ties capitalism directly to creative struggle.
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The album's core strength is marrying 90s R'n'B and synth-pop textures to politically charged, emotionally clear songwriting.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time arrives on The Passionate Ones with a record that is warped, welcoming and deservedly self-assured, and the best songs show that tug between ambition and tenderness. The standout tracks - “9 2 5” and “Max Potential” - crystallise the album's themes: the fizzing creative hustle of “9 2 5” and the dirgy, romantic ache of “Max Potential”. Elsewhere “It’s Time” and “BABY BABY” pin the mental struggle and newfound momentum that underline Brown's transition from basement to bigger stages. This is an album of songs about trying, failing and hoping - the best tracks are the moments where that contradiction sings loudest.
Key Points
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“9 2 5” is best for its fizzing undercurrent and hopeful paean to the creative hustle.
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The album’s core strengths are intuitive songwriting, themes of transition and longing, and confident production.
Themes
Critic's Take
Nourished By Time crafts a record on The Passionate Ones where the best songs - notably “It’s Time” and “9 2 5” - pair pointed social observation with sweaty, lo-fi grooves. Steve Erickson’s prose notes how “It’s Time” makes Brown’s conviction insist we look ourselves in the mirror, while “9 2 5” lays out the grind of working restaurants by day and writing by night. The album keeps a murky, agitated mood throughout, yet tracks like “Max Potential” find small motifs swelling into maximum impact. Overall, the best tracks on The Passionate Ones are those that balance blunt topical lines with claustrophobic yet funky arrangements.
Key Points
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The best song, “It’s Time”, is best because its conviction forces self-examination and pairs intense vocals with ominous guitars.
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The album’s core strengths are its socially conscious lyrics and the fusion of R&B, lo-fi indie pop, and funk-inflected instrumentation.