However, he nonetheless described the album as a "perfectly enjoyable listen" in spite of its shortcomings and a "return to form for Shadow, his best work since "Private Press", and, most importantly, fun to listen to." Greg Kot of the "Chicago Tribune" gave most praise to the album's "dark, shape-shifting mood pieces". While criticizing "The Less You Know, the Better" for what he felt was a lack of a coherent mood, describing it as "a highly schizophrenic collection", J.R. Moores of "Drowned in Sound" ultimately praised it as an improvement over "The Outsider" and "a step in the right direction." BBC Music writer Ian Wade acknowledged that while the album "will only ever stand in the vast shadow that its creator has cast since releasing the unprecedented "Endtroducing", "The Less You Know, the Better" isn't a bad album at all, and will likely grow into something far more impressive, something that isn't quite evident on first play. Like "The Private Press", it could be one the listener returns to down the line and wonders how it didn't initially click." Sam Richards of "NME", however, felt that the album sounded "like the work of a man struggling to recall his motivations for making music in the first place." Credits for "The Less You Know, the Better" adapted from album liner notes. Susanna Clarke  Susanna Mary Clarke (born 1 November 1959) is an English author best known for her debut novel "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began "Jonathan Strange" in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the "Strange" universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller. Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories" (2006). Both Clarke's novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While "Strange" focuses on the relationship of two men, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in "Ladies" focus on the power women gain through magic. Clarke was born on 1 November 1959 in Nottingham, England, the eldest daughter of a Methodist minister and his wife.