Got a linky?Quote:
Originally Posted by Troy
Is that rendering of the America/Beatles song the farkin' worst?
Look up 'saccharine' in the dictionary, and there's the song, rat thurr.
fp <--------- color him disappointed.
Never mind, I found it.
copy of this jumped into my hands recently.
Wow, it's more bloated than Kathleen Turner! Seriously, the only thing longer and more rambling is this damn thread.
Just overall statements:
Man, can these guys play or what? Seriously excellent rif***e and 15-fingered arpeggiating by everyone. Yeah, it's all a pastiche of '70s prog sounds and flavors, just as obvious an homage as XTC as The Dukes of Stratosphere and their loving rehash of psychedelia. For me personally, I just don't get tired of how big and fat TA sounds.
Too bad none of them can sing a lick. Nope, that's certainly not new information, Stolt has always has a peculiar delivery, so flat and honky. But the guys that don't sing in their regular bands? They shouldn't sing here either, it sounds like Karaoke.
The album itself:
There are elements to the first disc that I'll hang onto, mainly the "Overture" which really gives me everything I need. I need to take that into an audio editor and fade it out at 6:45 before "Whirlwind" starts. I can easily lose the first 1:30 too. Near as I can tell, you hear that, you've heard the album. There's a few other tracks that I like well enough, but every song at 6 or 8 minutes feels like it needs to 4 or 5 minutes without wearing out it's welcome. End the song already! If I want to hear that part one more time, I'll just play the song again. I won't be cluttering up the iTunes with much of this.
See, this band needs to understand that not every prog fan thinks going on for so long, beating these themes into the ground for hours at a time is a good thing in and of itself.
My take on the lyrics:
No, not as overtly religious as Morse's recent solo works, but they're still loaded with "giving yourself to faith" and "Follow this path to be Right" and "pre-apocalypse hysteria" overtones. It's all so simplistic and obvious. Cliched. Strident. Utterly devoid of irony or self-awareness. I won't go so far as to call it preachy, but it really does fly the "THIS IS SERIOUS" banner too strongly.
The other disc:
Hogweed's a total gas. And Soul Sacrifice. Easily the best things on the entire set. Thinking back on the all the covers they've done on previous albums and DVDs and how much I enjoyed those, it seems to me that being a covers band is why these 4 guys got together in the first place-to have some larfs and rip up on these kinds of classics. It's totally what these guys do best. I'd buy a whole double album of these guys doing covers before I'd buy one with original songs. That said, their version of I Need You is like an aural toothache for me. Someone hide the microphone from the drummer!
So to encapsulate my thoughts on this album:
This would easily be an album of the year for me if it was instrumental and if they worked it down to a single disc's worth of material, even with a couple of covers (but only Morse and Stolt can sing those). As it is now, there's probably 30 minutes of music that I'd like to hear again from the 2:15 on both discs.
A disappointment? No not really. It is what I thought it would be.
Nice. Good job, my man.