The Stranger,, October 2, 2003

"It's a difficult equation to tackle—the creation of a record that proposes to be at once aggressively minimal and engagingly intimate, of high-concept and lo-fi aesthetic, all French braided into the loose knot of a relatively accessible (if skewed) sequence of pop songs. But approach it from any of its incongruous angles, and the Blow's debut full-length still comes out with nearly all of its meandering, precocial ducks in a row—and then some. Marrying lone-member Khaela Maricich's familiar undulating synths, driving strings, basement beats, and breathy vocal stratum with a series of willfully oblique narratives (including elements of her Blue Sky vs. Night Sky performance piece, among others), The Concussive Caress offers the cognitive canyon's leap in conceptualism that finally fully realizes the long-palpable potential of its gifted creator. "