This is what I was getting at. One review mere days or weeks after an album is out doesn't leave much time for a reviewer to spend with an album and fully develop thoughts on it, and someone's opinion over months or even years can be drastically different than when they first heard the album and were first spending time with it.
Took the words right out of my mouth. I loved NMG but don't have much interest in their prior work. This has a few bright spots but makes it abundantly clear that NMG was a sidebar, rather than the first step down a coherent sonic path or progression. And that's fine; I'll always enjoy NMG, and can move on without any misgivings! But fwiw, as much as I loathe the site that shan't be named, the tagline at the top of the review kinda nails my overall feelings.
hmmm I really disagree that NMG doesn't fit into the continuum from Dealer to DDTM. I don't think you get from point a to point c without going through point b. that is to say I think there's a lot on NMG that reflects both what they did on Dealer and what they went on to do here. I do kind of see your point though in that I don't see them making a record that's very similar to Nearer My God again
Maybe they did not fully engage because they did not find the album fully engaging? I don't even want to defend the review because I can agree it is somewhat reductive but I guess I don't disagree with it as much as others here.
why would they not fully engage with a piece of work they're reviewing for... pitchfork.com? like this shit matters.
tbf this is kinda the purpose of advances haha. ideally a review released in close proximity to a release date is written by someone that’s had it for much longer
it really surprises me the amount of people who claim to not have seen this direction coming after NMG because it was literally written all over that record.
as someone who used to write and get advances it can ultimately end up not mattering depending on your schedule/work load, you can get an album a month out and still not be able to listen to it more than like 5 times because of time constraints and other obligations.
Is this due to how long the writer has spent with it? Because many writers could have had access to the album for months leading up to release. edit: I'm in a meeting and slow to catch up, ignore me lol
Plenty of songs from NMG could have fit on either Dealer or this record, Foxing is great at showing where they've been and where they're headed.
Oh yeah if they've got it months ahead of time and had the time to work on it then thats perfectly fine.
correct also idk, in my experience, i may know how much i love a record immediately but it may simultaneously take forever, months-to-years even, for all of my ideas about that record to completely congeal obv you can't run a review five months after release, because that's five months of people asking "where is the review," plus it would destroy the uneasy relationship between reviewers and publicists, who are, regardless of the score or the review, relying on that review offering the album a little bit more exposure close to the release date, and not a year later when i actually know what i want to write a lot of this is why i rarely review albums contemporaneously these days. they're always my least favorite pieces
Thinking of all the reactionary takes I've had. Trouble Will Find Me being a disappointment is probably the worst offender
All I know is that this is the first Foxing album I really enjoyed and is sticking with me. Its great. Also this thread makes me wanna listen to Passion Pit.
There’s a ton of albums I didn’t like that I completely came around on and consider some of my favorites ever today. The amulet was my second to least favorite circa album at release with flesh and bone being my least favorite on the record. Now it’s my favorite circa album by far and gun to my head flesh and bone would probably be my answer for favorite song of all time. I just had to go through some more life experiences to understand the album and that song on a deeper level. But there’s others too, dbm2, acceptance speech, instant gratification, mothership, basically the entire dgd discography after happiness until artificial selection when I started giving tilian a chance and now again those are some of my favorite records of all time
I honestly can't imagine bashing this record. Also Amulet is a good Circa record and "At Night It Gets Worse" is one of my faves.
I'm glad I don't write reviews because I would've called it a snoozer of an album when I first heard. Probably my favorite National record now. I was also mortified by the snares in Goodness lol
I love this album and think the praise from this community is well earned. Like all their albums, each element feels calculated and deliberate. But there's something special about this. With each listen I'm impressed with the finer details. I keep finding new elements in the songs!