Crooked Shadows is a weird one, because a lot of those songs feel super underwritten, but the bookends absolutely rule. "Just What to Say" sounds like he heard the first Julien Baker album and tried to fit all his trademark Dashboard angst into a more current sound, and I love it.
Two very good songs, and the rest is actively really hard to get through. I've tried a couple times and it feels like he didn't know what he wanted that album to be.
Do we know if ATTTICT was the “in the can” album he was talking about when Crooked Shadows came out? I remember him saying he already had another album done/almost done but there’s that long gap between CS and the follow up.
I listened to Crooked Shadows once lol. I don't think I even listened to the entirety of a few of the songs
I have a soft spot for "Belong" (summer playlist staple that year) and "Heart Beat Here" (could have been on the last album), but yeah, it never actually feels like an "album."
I relistened to Crooked Shadows recently (thanks again Greg for the vinyl!) We Fight, Heart Beat Here and Just What To Say are fantastic songs. Catch You is decent. But all the other songs sound like he is trying to cosplay different artists of the time. Belong is a Mashmello type EDM song that feels so out of place, and About Us & Be Alright sound like all those American Authors/Imagine Dragons/X Ambassador copy cat bands that were popping up around 2016.
A signature "fall of freshman year of college" album for me. Butch Walker and Adam Schlesinger were a match made in heaven on the production team.
@Jason Tate I hadn't thought about this album when we were talking about that run of 2000s emo albums that got dinged at the time for being too poppy and overproduced, but it definitely fits into that Chase This Light/Even If It Kills Me/Fast Times at Barrington High lineage.