Long drive through the mountains today, having a blast finding songs for a love 1&2 dream walker combo record. Oh my god did a run through on I Empire as I was climbing through the front range. Truly majestic. biggest serotonin dump I’ve had playing a record in a looooong time. What an incredible record. Hot take incoming, Toms love songs in AVA hit harder than blink.
Alright this is my definitive all killer no filler album from Love 1&2 as well as Dreamwalker Diary Surrender Young London Shove Tunnels Paralyzed Clever Love The Wolfpack Letters To God pt 2 Revelator Behold a pale horse Flight of Apollo Diary is an audible call because it’s not on the records. Criminally underrated song and their best opener since I Empire. It’s truly a shame it’s buried on a one off release. I really like how much this replicates the epic nature of whisper and empire and it feels like a good send off / bridge to this era of records. Surrender gets track 2 because it’s such a triumphant chorus. I have beef with the pretty lazy bridge and fade in of the chorus but it’s less cheesy lyrically than epic holiday and anxiety. Young London is peak Ava in this era and it’s a slog to get to it on Love 1. Shove-Clever love is the come down pt 2 of the record. I think Tunnels is one of AVA’s most resonant songs and deserves the big emotional punch in the middle. paralyzed is probably the best example of what Ilan brought to the table as the copilot of AVA in this era. Every blink record has a killer song that could be a lead single that kicks off the back third, I thought Wolfpack was good here. The rest of the album was hard to place, so I went with the spiritual themes Tom was dropping in this era. I like the push an pull of the hopeful up top, the human love component in the middle and the more spiritual journey in the end. I love the back third of the love records and it was really hard to pin down this part. Originally had dry your eyes and heroine in here. I went for a theme instead of song preference. I put flight last to kind of echo the epic nature of Heaven on I empire rather than a big closer. kind of makes you want to just start over. All three closers on these albums missed the mark imo. This was so fun. Ran through these albums a bunch on two long drives this weekend and haven’t been this present with AVA in many years. Check it if you’re curious. Let me know what you’d change. I dig the start with hope and epic sounds, into love, death, hit the existential spiritual component, and round it out with hope again. A couple takeaways, appreciated how intentional they are on albums. There’s so many fade in fade out interludes it’s kind of impossible to do this seamlessly. There’s so many good parts on these albums the execution on full songs was tough. It’s cool to have a band that isn’t an artists main band be this dense and rich. Love the themes that run through this band. Powerful stuff.
it's not what I would have gone for but really cool effort @Ronald. I like seeing maligned albums get some love here. agreed the song-to-song flow of Pt. 2 especially is really well done and Diary is incredible, I usually just sub it in for We Are when I listen to my overall LOVE playlist Dreamwalker is such a different beast both sonically and Ilan-ly that I struggle to imagine those songs back-to-back with the LOVE ones. that said I think it, the demos and the two EPs after have a classic album in them
beyond j a love 1+2 hybrid, i always thought most of my issues with whisper and empire would be fixed by making a hybrid album of the best 5-6 from either. some really good tunes on both but about half of them blur like crazy
Ended up running through the whole discography this weekend. I really love this band. one of the greatest blink universe feats is the trilogy of albums Tom put out in a four year period. BCR, Untitled, & Whisper is outrageous.
Diary is such an incredible song. I do go back and visit Dreamwalker at least once a year. Definitely has some great songs, and I think Lifeforms took them even a step further. This band's discography is pretty great, but I do think some of their songs sound too "same-y" and get lost within a full discog run. Some great songs on every album.
Whisper 20 years old this year. Highly unlikely Tom would get it going again, but with Atom being a free agent and illan moving to foo fighters a run of shows would be so radical with the core members playing the album through. Bonus points if they did it with TBS doing Louder Now. Top 5 shows of all time for me as a kid.
That was so bizarre when he appeared in one video and never actually did any shows lol. Would have been rad to see him with Ava.
Yeah I listened a couple times last month, mostly holds up, some of the lines are still corny, but they’ve always kind of been, and meanders a little too long at times, but still a lot of hits and great songs