Circa Survive Band • Page 24

OMG the circa version of Devils Song is complete magic. Wish they went with it. Crazy

 

Really digging into these demos now - "New Sun" and "Who" are mesmerizing songs. Honestly, they sound like they could've developed to be better than a handful of the ones that made OLG - and that's coming from someone who considers OLG a top 10-15 record of the 2000s.

God, these demos make me miss the way Circa wrote music back in this era. The swirling/dueling guitar parts, the chord progressions, the impeccable sense of melody and atmosphere.

 

I like those two b-sides more than maybe anything they've put out since.

 

Definitely what hurts BSN and keeps it from being in the ranks of their best, totally agree about their old stuff.

 

I think all their albums are perfect.

 

im not here for teh BSN slander

 

Agree, but I don't see that it's really come back in the material after BSN, either.

These demos signal to me that they wrote in a very loose, riff/jam oriented way back then... and that process yieled a lot of amazing, diverse, unique riffs. I mean, the last 2 demos on Disc 2 are full of them and they didn't even get used!

Further, Anthony's vocal melodies on the demos (and to a lesser extent the record) are so intriguing and unpredictable, very much like on TTN.

Starting with BSN, the writing seems starkly different - as if they're trying to write songs in a more conventional sense. It's just a whole different process and outcome. I understand why some love it, but to me, the best way to sum up the change from the pre-BSN to the post-OLG era is "more boring."

I also suspect the primary songwriter(s) within the band must have changed during that transition, but who knows. Whoever wrote most of the riffs for Juturna and OLG is so creative with melody that I can't imagine them holding back so much on subsequent material.

 

when BSN came out it immediately became my favorite, but it has since fallen off.
on an unrelated point, i'd say the On Letting Go artwork is potentially the best album cover to come out of our scene, and is probably my favorite in general.

 

nailed it

 

Thursday's No Devolucion is close imo

 

Can I just say I'm on board with all of this except the bolded. The vocal melodies on the demos are so dull and insipid to me, I'm sooooo happy like 90% of it got re-worked.

 

Violent Waves is really the only misstep in their discog and even then there is plenty to love on there it's just a bit of a growing pains record as they tried to figure out what kind of band they wanted to become. Descensus is more straight forward than previous material for sure, but that's not a bad thing. Many bands have gone from progressive to straightforward successfully, look at Mastodon

 

i struggled hard to get into descensus, and am gonna have to try again.

 

To clarify: I'm not necessarily saying I prefer the demo vocal lines. Rather, I just think they're kinda exotic and unconventional, whereas the album versions are "cleaned up" and polished.

I probably would've liked the demo versions equally, but for a broader audience, they did the right thing in the studio.

In that regard, I liken these demos to TTN, a record I love in part because Anthony sounds like he's not making the slightest effort to be accessible or conform to expectations in his melodies (perhaps best exemplified on the title track) -- that's rare to find in contemporary music.

 

Violent Waves is honestly tied with On Letting Go as my second favorite Circa record. Something about that record has always connected with me really well.

 

Anthony described that writing process as "jerking each other off musically" or something like that. But yeah, going from songs like Living Together to songs like I Felt Free... some spark is gone. Not that I hate that album or any Circa album, they're all awesome, but the first two are mystical for just the reasons you described.

 

I like I Felt Free more than most of Juturna.............

 

love these b sides so much.. its like I just got 2 brand new circa songs! so amped for their next record

 

Absolute blasphemy. No other way to put it

 

Well those demos are really interesting, loving the b-sides and their version of Devil's Song is really enchanting, so cool! I'd have to agree I'm glad some of those vocal lines got re-worked, sounded really bland at a few points, and eventually OLG is my favorite record, maybe even of all time hah.

 

Also, I like their whole discography it seems, and BSN is seriously epic to me, there's just no need to compare those albums : )

 

I always thought Blue Sky Noise is a great album. Sure, they morphed into an alternative rock direction and I know they dropped some of that atmospheric and progressive nature, but I think they do a great job at accomplishing what they were trying to do on BSN. Some fans always seem to look at I Felt Free in a negative light, but you can look at Juturna in a negative light too. I mean, Always Getting What You Want, for me, struggles to be memorable. Between that and Meet Me In Montauk, Juturna doesn't have a particularly strong finish. I do think those songs are good, but they have always been the weakest on the album to me, which is how I've always felt towards I Felt Free and The Longest Miles: the two weakest songs on the album, but they're still good and featured on an album with a ton of great songs.

I feel like a lot of fans always want to pick on Blue Sky Noise and point out I Felt Free all the time, but that album has so many greats on it too: Get Out, Glass Arrows, Through The Desert Alone, Frozen Creek, Fever Dreams, Dyed In The Wool. I dunno, I don't really care that they went more straightforward with their writing. There's still a lot to love and Descensus really brought back a lot of that Juturna/On Letting Go nature if you ask me.

 

Even as someone lamenting the changes post-OLG, I agree that BSN is a fine record with lots of great songs.

For one thing, stuff like "Strange Terrain" and "Glass Arrows" actually does retain that creative sense of melody from the early days while polishing up the production a bit. Along with "Backmask," these BSN-era songs vaguely represent the direction I wish they'd gone in more consistently.

Beyond that, I really enjoy "Get Out," "Through the Desert," "Dyed in the Wool" and others for what they are, despite the considerable changes in songwriting. I don't love any of those as much as most of Juturna and OLG, but even years later, I still rock out and genuinely enjoy them when I put on BSN.

That brings us to "I Felt Free" and "Imaginary Enemy," though. I still remember putting on the BSN leak for the first time, and when that sequence came on, I kinda felt a pit in my stomach and knew things would never be quite the same with CS. Honestly, those tracks still make me cringe more than anything - and I can't help but to imagine label pressure and/or a half-hearted attempt at some mainstream fodder were factors at some level.

Juturna has some meandering passages, and I actually agree with the two you've identified as being less memorable. In my opinion, they still serve the flow of the record in a way that's identifiable, whereas the throwaway tracks on a record like BSN are harder to justify or sit through.

 

Ive never seen anything but love for Meet Me in Montauk. And closing with the masterpiece that is House of Leaves is whoa.

Always Getting What You Want opens really well but it is the weakest Juturna track because of its chorus which coincidentally sounds more akin to something they would later write on their 3rd, 4th, or 5th albums.

 

Totally agreed, picking on I Felt Free is easy, but it's the poppiest tune out there - which I personally really adore, and its simple message is actually what got me in a great fucking mood hearing it live, not being too eclectic for my own good, I suppose. To me it's perfect they've written some diverse albums, all in all you can choose what's better for you, but at least it's not boring and lukewarm. However, Juturna definitely ends on a huge note with House of Leaves after all of that, it's one of my all time favroties!