Ruston Kelly - The Weakness (April 7, 2023) Album • Page 16

Anyone want two free tickets to Asbury tonight? I can’t go and don’t want them to go to waste.

 

i don't really like this album at all which is a bummer since S&D was top 3 for me from 2020

 

Do you not like the songs, or the production? Just curious. I like it, but am expecting to like the songs better live where the overproduction gets stripped away

 

both lol

 

This is fine but it doesn’t match up to the first two albums for me. It’s missing the catchiness and polished production of those outside of the title track/Michael Keaton.

 

Wait, is it too produced or not produced enough???? We've got people on the same page saying two different things.

 

I think the production doesn’t sound as clean as his other stuff. Nothing sounds as smooth/huge as Radio Cloud, Into the Blue, Mockingbird, Faceplant, etc. As someone who has never seen him before I’m kind of bummed he is playing so much new stuff on this tour haha

 

TK showed up to play the NYC date tonight, pretty sick.

 

TK?

 

RK’s dad

 

That’s awesome

 

his dad but also his pedal steel player for the past 4-5 years. I think with the past tour he stopped playing with Ruston, so it was a treat for him to come out. Lots of references to “TK” in his music.

 

Seeing him tonight

 

that would be TK of the advice about not looking over your shoulder at the wake while steering a boat

 

f u have fun

 

I’ll be there too!

 

My main issue with this record is that it has no real drums on it exept for Let only Love Remain. I hope this will just be a transition LP and his next will be a full band electric guitar driven alternative/grunge record. That would suit him well.

 

Or, get this, a country record

 

I don’t care that there aren’t any live drums lol, Let Only Love Remain is easily the worst song on here anyway. Totally kills the pace of the album, without it everything through Holy Shit would be A+

 

I lost my eye brows from all the hot takes in this thread.

 

True. It kills the pace and it sounds out of place on this record because it has real drums. I'm ok with the programmed drums, if he only would have used it for all songs on this record. The Songs are great.

 

he sounded amazing last night

 

There ... are live drums on the album. There are literally clips of them recording drums in the studio, like the second slide here:

 

"Let Only Love Remain" is a great song (and I personally think it's good for the pace). Either way, there's a difference between something affecting an album's pace and its quality.

The only thing that really throws me off anywhere here is the quality of "Mending Song." I understand that he was having trouble getting it right in the studio, but I went back and watched a video I took of him playing it last fall and even that kind of sounded better to me. That song is too good to sound to be buried like it is.

 

Yeah, I don't feel like the drums on "Let Only Love Remain" feel out of place on the album at all, or that it breaks up the flow of the album in the slightest. It's a great song, and I think the album is sequenced incredibly well. The only song I even notice the production on at all is "Mending Song", because that does sound noticeably more lo-fi (?) than all of the other songs, but even then it feels like a stylistic choice and it works for the song.

Not proclaiming to be a Ruston Kelly expert or anything, but I feel like he's always played around stylistically - like the vocals on "Son of a Highway Daughter". I absolutely love that song but I would never expect him to be autotuned for the entire album or anything like that.