The Race for Space (album)

Upon its release, The Race for Space was met with largely positive reviews from music critics. Most reviews praised the band's choice of theme and commented heavily on the album's use of tone and instrumentation to depict certain events in the space race. While most critics unanimously praised upbeat tracks such as "Gagarin" and "The Other Side", they were somewhat divided on other tracks on the album, such as "Fire in the Cockpit" and "Valentina", which drew, if any, minor criticism. In comparison to the band's debut album, Inform-Educate-Entertain, critics also believed that The Race for Space had elevated the band from a "novelty act", and praised the album as a concept album that improves on its predecessor. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews", based on 12 reviews as of December 2015.[9]

Kevin Harley, writing in The Independent, wrote that the band proved themselves with the album; "there’s fuel enough for manoeuvre in pop that’s piloted with intelligence, energy, craft and atmospheric control, even if it seems frightfully, stiflingly high-concept." He commented on the band's departure form the rock-centric sounds of Inform-Educate-Entertain to a more electronic sound, relating the band's move to the album's opening track, with John F. Kennedy's speech for "change and challenge". He also further praised the album's mood tonal shifts, and concluded the review by stating, "[The Race for Space] is richly entertaining, immersive and evocative, orchestrated with fastidious care and feeling."[17] In an extremely positive review for State, Phil Udell praised the album, and its space race theme, as giving the band's sound "a new dimension". He comments lightly on The Race for Space's music taking "more of a backseat than [Inform-Educate-Entertain]", and going on to write in praise of "The Other Side".[19]

To encompass such a momentous period in human history into one record – and a short one at that – may have seemed like an act of high folly but, like their forebears, Public Service Broadcasting have chosen this path not because it is easy, but because it is hard. The results are stellar.

— Phil Udell[19]

In his positive review of the album for Drowned in Sound, Marc Burrows wrote that "the joy [in The Race for Space] is in how the duo marry theme and function", citing specifically the album's instrumentals and their fit to the archival recordings used, such as "the beeping signal of the pioneering "Russian moon" built into the loping, housy rhythm of 'Sputnik'", and "'E.V.A''s portrayal of Alexei Leonov’s first spacewalk through quietly disorientating switches in timing and mood, breaking from excitement and speed to a gentle drifting."[14] He also commented positively on the album's unbiased use of both positive and tragic moments from the space race as context to the music; something Harley had also noted in his review.[17] Burrows also notably concluded the review in emotionally-charged praise of "The Other Side", describing it as "history and melody and wonder hitting you all at once in a moment of complete joy and release. Just wonderful."[14] At The Arts Desk, Thomas H Green wrote that The Race for Space is an effective reminder of "the 1960s media's wild excitement about the space race" and "the era when every boy wanted to be an astronaut", which had been "almost forgotten". He also stated that the band took advantage of the current trends in electronic music, such as sampling, comparing them to The Egg, in a positive light. He wrote that The Race for Space was "a rich and thoroughly enjoyable nine-track journey", and stated that the band "reinvented the concept album as a delightful, historically engaged rave-up."[10]

Phil Mongredien of The Observer stated that the album's space race theme was a "smart move", praising the band's use of "finely judged soundscapes",[18] while his counterpart, Jenny Stevens, writing for the parent newspaper The Guardian, was less positive about the album. She wrote, instead, that the album "does little to provoke", stating that the album was "less intrepid than its source material."[15] Tony Clayton-Lea, writing for The Irish Times, spoke positively about the album, but challenged its replay value, stating that while "It’s all nicely “out there”, with music channelling Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin... whether you’d want to listen to it more than a few times is debatable."[16]