Foxing - Nearer My God (August 10, 2018) Album • Page 24

Grand Paradise Gameshark Five Cups Bastardizer and Won't Drown are up there for me

Lambert reminds me of Silent Alarm era Bloc Party at times

 

won’t drown is my favorite i think. bastardizer, grand paradise, and title track are my other top songs. gameshark is a wild song tho

 

Below Game Genie but above Action Replay.

 

A track by track guide to the record is below. Unreleased songs in spoiler tags in case you want to skip this post.

01. Grand Paradise

Buzzing guitars and programmed beats open the record, its skeletal beginning probably instantly familiar to anyone who's already heard this track live. Opens out after the first refrain with the full band kicking in. It's a more muscular song than you expect and tells you to park your expectations at the door, its opening R&B vibes essentially obliterated by the song's close.
02. Slapstick

Lead single, you've probably already gotten to know this one. Video is super good.

03. Lich Prince

'I've been thinking of new ways to fuck with old friends'. A straightforward indie rock track that draws on the atmospheric nature of the band's first two records for its pared-back verses before shooting skyward for its chorus. If it doesn't sound like Foxing to your ears then that's exactly the point - they've taken some real risks here and this is only track 3.
04. Gameshark

Maybe the heaviest song in the band's catalogue to date. Gets a lot of mileage out of Conor's falsetto and a surprisingly funky bassline. Sounds like the lovechild of Wild Beasts, The Antlers and the more outgoing moments on Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. The explosion after the second chorus is going to cause carnage in a live setting. I've played this more than the rest of the album in a ratio of at least 6:1. It's phenomenal. If you're wondering where the distorted and pitch-shifted 'Nearer My God to Thee' sample that they used in the album trailer comes from, it's this song's coda.
05. Nearer My God

See what they did there? Straight to the point with the most accessible track on the record. You probably won't be getting the air raid siren guitar licks out of your head any time soon. Deserves to be a set closer on this forthcoming tour, but for sheer spectacle they might decide to go with the album centrepiece. Which song is that?, you may ask. Well...

06. Five Cups

It's this one. The ripe-to-be-a-10-to-15-minute-live-jam behemoth that still takes up 9-and-a-half on the album. I don't know if they'll have an arrangement worked out in time for tour, though. There's a lot going on here, from Jon's expressive electronic and acoustic rhythms, to the ghostly ambience of the song's middle section, to its goosebump-inducing finale, over delayed, reversed melodies and Conor and Eric's insistent vocal combination. It sacks off the idea of song structure about halfway through for a transcendent wall of sound, and is all the better for it.
07. Heartbeats

Not a The Knife cover. It's been commented on earlier in this thread, but the way the beat builds out of the strings in the song's intro is masterfully done. I still can't tell what time signature the verses are in, but somehow it all comes together for the chorus. The dissonant breakdown part gives me fucking chills - not the first time the album's done this and it won't be the last. All together now: 'You are not in lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ove...'
08. Trapped in Dillard's

Not really sure Five Cups can be classed as a ballad, so this song is the closest we get on the album. The electronic flourishes across the record are most prominent here. There's a clear Death Cab for Cutie influence audible in this song; something about the arrangement is reminiscent of their more recent output, since this could fit pretty well on Codes & Keys. It'll be interesting to see this performed live, though with 7 members on tour with them they can probably pull it off.
09. Bastardizer

Did someone say Manchester Orchestra? It's not quite as rough around the edges as that influence might suggest, but there's something undeniably Andy Hull-esque about Conor's choice of vocal melodies in this song. This is the one they've talked about that has bagpipes in it. It's only for the closing moments, though, and it works a lot better than you might expect considering it's not even in the correct key.
10. Crown Candy

This is the one track on the album that'll split opinion, I think. Some people will love it and some will hate it. This is Foxing at their most psychedelic, and some of the chord progressions are dead weird. This won't really make musical sense on first listen, but it works well between Bastardizer and the album's penultimate track. It's a grower that works a lot better taken in the wider album context.
11. Won't Drown

The first time I heard this, my immediate reaction was, 'yeah, this has gotta be a single, right?' It turns out that it won't be, but tucked away towards the end of the record probably suits it better as you won't be expecting how hard this hits. Maybe the best chorus they've ever written - this needs to be added to their live set at the earliest possible opportunity. Fucking H U G E.
12. Lambert

With the variety of emotions and musical moods expressed across the preceding 11 tracks, you'd think that Won't Drown would be the album's natural stopping point, but Lambert makes perfect sense as a closer. Anchored by unshakeable melodies and ferocious drumming, the song is a testament to what Foxing can achieve when they allow themselves to cut loose, and I mean really go all out. While it's not as much of a shock to the system as the 'what the fuck did I just listen to?' jolt of Gameshark, it sticks to the album sequencing blueprint pretty faithfully, in that Nearer My God's most forceful and expansive tracks are saved for key points in the running order.

 

Perfect. Seems like the album's sequencing really adds to the potent-ness of each song

exactly how I like it

 

So I guess this album isn't anywhere near as subdued as Dealer is.

 

Yeah it's definitely an 'album' as opposed to a collection of songs. Make the effort and put an hour aside for the full thing.

@Micah511 it has a song as fucking wild as Gameshark on it so that makes it 'less subdued' by default ;)

 

I'm already setting aside like 15 hours this weekend so no sweat lol

also, thanks for the rundown...seriously appreciated!

 

This band evolved twice from Dealer

They went from Charmander to Charizard

 

I didn’t wait. God DAMN this is gonna be good.

 

More like from Happiny to Blissey for how much bliss this album's gonna give me

 

I think I’ve convinced myself to take a day off work and see them in Lawrence and STL when they come through. One night by myself where i can fully enjoy the show and another night with all my friends where I can feel like a king when they’re super impressed with the show.

 

Honestly I haven't been huge on either of the singles from this, despite being a fan of the first two albums. Idk what I'm missing. But the huge amount of hype in here and the descriptions of the rest of the album definitely have me intrigued. Will check this out.

 

Honestly the record has such a wide range that you could shrug at all the singles and end up loving the rest of NMG. Gameshark is dropping tomorrow so it'll be very interesting to see the response to that ITT.

 

I just listened to the iTunes 90-second previews of the whole album... wow, okay I'm actually super intrigued now. This'll be an interesting one.

 

Looks like Gameshark should be available at midnight EST... I think it's already out on Spotify overseas.

 

wow yeah Gameshark is... gonna take a few listens to sink in

 

no idea what this is doing on YouTube but this is the studio version of the song

 

It gone

 

whoops

it still works for me weirdly enough but yeah I think TCR will be posting it 'officially' tomorrow for those of you who aren't on a streaming service

 

Yeah it’s weird, same thing happened to me when I listened to the 1975s GYAT

 

Wish I could hear it now but oh well, just an hour and 15 minutes to go. I can see it on Spotify so more than likely it's coming tonight.

Does anyone know the reason for releasing these singles as singles on iTunes and Spotify? Is it just for radio play and streams? I've always wondered what the difference was between that and just releasing them on the pre-order.

 

Gameshark... holy shit.

 

It's so good

 

"Gameshark" is a fucking slapper. That is all.