I heard Bleed American first of their catalog and it did a great job drawing me in, but I think it's like their fifth best at this point.
Clarity is awesome but definitely sounds... older. Bleed American is great, not as dark as Futures. I personally think Invented gets the closest to the Futures sound but really you can't go wrong with this catalog.
woah woah woah gotta get my vote for Invented in also Futures but it's already winning Craig your Damage review is one of my favorites
bleed american was the first album i heard by them, i was like 10 i think and i heard futures when i was 12, then i was super late to chase this light and didnt find it til early 2008 and then in 2009 i discovered clarity
Actually I think I listened to Chase This Light first, but it didn't make much of an impression on me and then it was years before I checked out the band for real.
I was in middle school, around 12 or 13 years old, when I first heart The Middle on the radio. I thought it was okay, and I had a crush on Jim based on his voice alone (never saw what any of what the band looked like until well into high school). But once I heard Sweetness on the radio a few months later, I was hooked. It changed my life. I think I put that song on every mix CD I made throughout 2001 and 2002 lol.
I'll do you one better: I'd put it sixth. It's a very good record that they've eclipsed repeatedly throughout their career.
@travisred good call. Give Futures some more time to saturate before you get hooked on their other albums.
Bleed American was one of the first records I bought so it's always had a special place for me. I think there's some filler in the middle of the album, but the first few songs on it are classics and it ends on a strong note too. Clarity & Futures are probably my favorite records from them.
I started with Damage, listened to it and Bleed American a bit, and then one day, I was going to my uncle's house for lunch while listening to Futures and I was so impressed by it that, because I had to stop half way through since we arrived, I spent the entire rest of the day speculating what the second half would sound like, eager to go back into the car on the ride back to listen. Second favorite record in the world for me now and it opened a love for the band.
Pain was on the soundtrack for one of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games and I remember I would edit the songs the game would play to only play Pain over and over again. Then the band would disappear from me for a couple years until a friend of mine gave me Bleed American, Futures, Chase This Light, and most of Clarity in 2007. I only listened to Pain, Lucky Denver Mint, and Your New Aesthetic though. Eventually I started listening to The Middle because my dad told me to check it out, then finally listened to Chase This Light in 2008 and the rest is history.
That's what made "Pain" stick out to me on first listen. I knew the song, but I didn't know why, as I didn't listen to radio. I knew most of the lyrics and the instrumentation for some odd reason... It wasn't until a year later that I would discover that the familiar song was in Tony Hawn Underground 2, a game I obsessively played in my youth.