I think I've come around a bit on the album art and I really am fine with the production on this even. with all the context up to this point I think it's good even. I don't get taken out of the experience, the guitars sound psychedelic, the vocals sit nice and aren't too loud, all the pretty melodies can be heard, I don't think it sounds muddy, everything occupies the frequency range pretty well really.
I still am wary of leaks too, like I know it says 320 and it should be good, but when I listen to the singles on apple music and then on the leak I hear a bit of a drop of quality in the leak versions. Maybe I'm crazy but I did this with the exact same headphones and volume. The leak version just sounded a little bit muddier to my ears, again I could just be driving myself crazy but thats how I feel. I may avoid listening much until its officially released.
As far as I can tell, the leak sounds the same as the FLAC copy of Lustration I have. And looking at the spectogram in Audacity, there's no sign the 320 is a transcode. I'm expecting the CD to sound identical to the 320 leak, but you can never be totally sure, of course.
To fight off the urge to listen to the leak, I'm giving Ant's post Avalon solo records another shot. Beautiful Things is still kinda meh to me, I do like the happy songs and I love Can't Have It All At Once so, so much. Young Legs is a really dope album I didn't give enough attention to as I'm listening now.
You are probably right, sometimes I think when I put stuff from iTunes into my iCloud music library It compresses it again or something
Half of it. The singles and Flesh and Blood. I may have misspoken somewhere and I said I heard it but I have not.
Ahh gotcha. You're gonna dig the album based on what I remember your opinions were. My burger was from a place called Gordon Biersch btw it was aight
It definitely seems like it! If I had to tier the songs so far, I'd say Lustration = The Amulet > Flesh and Blood > Rites > Premonition, but I liked them all. I've only seen Gordon Biersch in Baltimore, you from there?
I think Rites and Premonition are the weakest on the album for me but even those are good songs and they're still growing on me.
I think the intro to Rites sounds exactly like a riff on a Trail of Dead song, does anyone know which song?
Texas. Wish I lived in Baltimore. The rest of the album is pretty damn different than the tracks they've released + FaB tbh. You're in for it
I think this album could find a wider audience than what they have been able to achieve so far. It's not that it's more accessible per se, just that it has a lot of ~modern sensibilities~. Idk what I mean to say here exactly, I just feel like The Amulet is more of a step away from the scene that the first 3 LPs were a fringe part of, and more of a step closer to this post-grunge shoegazey punk that a lot of bands under Will Yip have evolved into. It's still a fucking Circa record at the end of the day and there's no bones about that, but it has a vibe that is starting to feel more and more like something NEW every time I listen to it. Sometimes a listen-through will feel mellow as fuck even with the heavy hitters on there, and other times it feels like it's their most intense album. I think for me it has a lot to do with the title track closing the album out. It is simultaneously their most mellow and most explosive closer. Like Your Friends are Gone and descensus I feel like I know what I'm in for, but this song has two identities still for me. All this might change after it's been out for a while though I guess, it HAS been less than a full week that it leaked.
I'm thinking it's definitely Will You Smile Again? , but they're just kinda similar. And as for Baltimore, I've never lived there but I really like it there, it's a nice place, I love the east coast.
imo it sounds more modern bc it's not alt rocky what's pretty unfortunate is that there's a lot of young bands that were influenced on some level by Circa now that get coverage that Circa never got (and sadly still don't get )....or other young peers that work with Yip that aren't actually very good or creative or mature bands. They've all but been completely ignored critically the last many years. I think this newest album is widely appealing enough to net them that acclaim but idk hopefully they get some new exposure in new avenues sooner rather than later (or ever). That must be tough