I don't recall ever hearing John say the word 'Fuck' before. I listened to this album this morning during breakfast and was pleasantly surprised. Good tuneage. Makes me excited for the next TBS album.
Some interesting tidbits in his AMA today: My name is John Nolan, I'm a member of the band Taking Back Sunday I'm also a solo artist and former member and co founder of the band Straylight Run I recently put out my third solo album Abendigo and will be touring the US in support of it November 6-30. : Music " The intro to Half A Block was written while TBS was recording Home Coming. I took that melody for the “I’m Coming Home” part but then I still had those lyrics and melodies that I wanted to use for myself. I thought I could get away with it. I actually played the guys the music for Half A Block during the Tidal Wave sessions but it was jut instrumental at that point and we were at the very end of recording so it didn’t make the cut." "Michelle and I haven’t worked on any new material since Straylight. Now that we both have little kids and live in different states it’s pretty difficult. You never know when it might happen again though. " "When I was on tour with Dashboard and Saosin we had an impromptu accapala jam session every night with a revolving group of people. It was super hippy stuff and we recorded on our phones but never went further. We called the group Fucking Whatever."
Damn. I'm excited to hear Straylight songs live of course, that's why I initially was going to this show, but now I'm looking forward to several songs from this as well.
The opener on this is just towering. Like what Brand New might have progressed to in 2018 if they'd stayed on a more straight trajectory.
Wowzers I love this record after a few listens. A nice variation in sound between the heavier rock songs, poppy tunes, and slow tracks. Also as a die hard TBS fan its really cool to hear John's influence in all their reunion records shine through on this.
I'm a huge John Nolan fan, and, even though I was surprised how loud his set opening for The Honorary Title was, I did NOT see this coming. Based on his output the past few years, I fully expected this to be a "solid but unspectacular" singer-songwriter type album, more in the vein of Half a Block to Go. Not that there's anything wrong with that... it just wouldn't have been exciting. This album is much more dynamic than anything I could have expected (aforementioned track excluded ha)... and that opener?! Stunner.