Anberlin Band • Page 250

Middle fingers? NOT MY ANBERLIN

 

Damn that 8th grade field trip photo goes so hard. Do NOT show their moms...!!

 

Thank you for the help!

 

it says a lot that he's not even in the photo...

 

There's a strange irony here that on streaming platforms, Anberlin is tagged as featured artist alongside Stephen solo, since Stephen isn't recording with the actual Anberlin music

 

it's unfortunately typical for a lot of guest appearances nowadays to boost the other band's streams, even if none of them are on the song (same thing happened with his appearance on the Watashi Wa song)

 

Of course, I'm aware of the practice, but this case is different since he's not.... really in Anberlin right now. He was for that Watashi Wa disaster, sorry I mean album

 

i gotcha. it's dumb for sure

 

What’s the whole Watashi Wa thing? I’m getting that he was featured but what was the controversy?

 

Pages of it here, though a lot of the paper trail has been deleted

Eager Seas - Mine As Well (2018) • forum.chorus.fm

COVID denier, anti LGBT, all the worst kind of extreme Christianity

 

frontman went down a big anti-vax, conspiratorial rabbit hole, and this song plays into it, iirc.

 

Yeah I was about to say:

 

I think I’ve only ever heard one Watashi Wa song that was on a sampler like in the mid 00s.

 

Once upon a time Watashi Wa was largely inoffensive pop punk. Then they disbanded, Seth went solo and made an album that was meant to be his first Eager Seas album but Tooth and Nail made him release it under the Watashi Wa moniker. That album came out at a really profound period of life for me and his shift in style and lyricism genuinely moved me. The opener and closer, in particular, “Ten Years and Separating States” and “Something to Say”, meant a great deal to me. Then he formed a new band, Lakes, released some genuinely solid music under that moniker, and then changed the band name again to Eager Seas like he’d always wanted. His album, Fire Ahead, was written about his divorce and was, again, a solid album and one of my favorites from that year. The closing track “Life Can Be Seen” on the follow up album, Mine as Well, is - to me at least - one of the most beautiful songs he’d ever written and kind of a perfect summation of how far he’d come in his journey.

Then….in the next few years Covid happened and Seth, I dunno, lost his mind? That’s when he went down a rightwing rabbit hole and started posting unhinged conspiracy theory garbage and none of it aligned with his past social media presence. I truly believe he got radicalized in that time period and he basically said as much on Twitter (“I used to be blind, but God recently opened my eyes” kind of stuff, etc.) and it’s very disappointing. His writing 100% dropped off after he brought back Watashi Wa and the whole album feels like the perfect distillation of his new…outlook…I guess.

 

Did it start way later than it should have began? (Lead vocalist OLD!)

 

I remember Lakes. The name at least

 

Seth across his many monikers, at one point made some truly amazing music. Lakes put out some damn good records and that Photograph EP.... but boy did he tank himself

 

I missed Fire Ahead and Mine As Well. Half want to check them out after your description but half put off by everything I know of him recently.

 

I met him at furnace fest before all that info came out and told him I was a big fan of his stuff and I cannot stress how kind and sweet he was. It was like so disarming. Real bummer about that shit

 

Fire Ahead is great, definitely recommend checking it out

 

Didn’t realize Fire Ahead was about his divorce…The Agreement was also about his marriage falling apart. Two different relationships? Either way, he had some great albums under Eager Seas/Lakes.

 

I think that The Agreement was written about his time when he was in the throes of his divorce, and then Fire Ahead was written about the aftermath and the pain of leaving his old life in California behind. The opening and closing tracks, Fire Ahead A, and Fire Ahead B, bookend the album and are directed specifically to his ex in a really healthy, beautiful transition from feeling this sense of loss and frustration to then ending the album with the same melody, but this time hoping nothing but the best for her. I’ve always loved that.

 

Anyone have the most recent 2LP press of NTFP? How's it sound compared to the original pressings?
Not sure I want to shell out $50+ for an album I already have on vinyl, even if the bonus songs are enticing.

 

i'm suspecting a proper pressing of Lost Songs is on the way, otherwise i would've picked it up

 

Fire Ahead was the last album I heard from them and all their stuff up to then was really good. REally thoughtful and heartfelt stuff.

They fell off my radar until 2021 or whatever and I listened to that Zombie song to see what the controversy was about. Lyrical content aside, its just a really bad song.