Switchfoot - Native Tongues (January 18, 2019) Album • Page 3

I agree with this. He used to be more... subversive is probably too strong of a word, but I feel like he was actively challenging the expectations of Christian rock for a long time. Now he’s just falling back on a lot of Christian rock lyrical tropes and cliches instead of doing something interesting with them. Hello Hurricane felt like the big drop off in quality for me at the time, but almost a decade later I kind of appreciate songs like “Needle and Haystack Life” as the best version of what they’re doing now and I want that back.

 

Hello Hurricane has aged incredibly well. Almost to the level of The Beautiful Letdown and Nothing is Sound for me now.

I'm actually partial to Switchfoot's poppier stuff so I didn't mind Fading West. In fact, taking the Edge of the Earth EP into account I'd probably put it fourth in their overall discography. Where the Light Shines Through was more dynamic but there were a couple songs I flat out didn't like ("Looking for America' especially).

This one is tough after first listen. It's the most generic in terms of how they've followed recent music trends, but I think they do it quite a bit better than the people they sound like (e.g. Imagine Dragons) and it's still very much Switchfoot. It sounds solid but I can see people hating it. I need to let it sit a little more myself. First reaction is it's more consistent than WTLST but still not up to par with their better work. That said, I could use a little bit more light in my life, so I'll probably have this playing quite a bit.

Also, "Oxygen" sounds like The War on Drugs which is pretty sweet.

Totally a bunch of random/disjointed thoughts right now. It's one of those "I don't care" afternoons. Hahaha.

 

Idk if I’ll come back to this often, but I don’t hate it either. It has more life than I remember either of their last two albums having

 

Dang, well ok I'm gonna have to listen to that one then

 

Yeah, this is the issue for me. Like, something like "Restless" is pretty clearly from that world, but the lyrical approach is a lot more interesting than most of what he's been writing on the last two albums.

 

Switchfoot was a long time favorite band of mine. I forgot this was dropping today and honestly don’t have a desire to give it a spin. Kinda sad.

 

Couldn’t agree more. I have no idea what they are even doing anymore

 

There were some songs I enjoyed from this, and others that were meh. I'll agree with all the above statements that this band isn't what they used to be. They're still Switchfoot though, and I still hear a glimmer of that old magic.

 

None of this is really "bad," per se. I like "Let It Happen" and "Oxygen" a lot, and I'd probably enjoy most of the songs if I heard them at the grocery store or something. But there's just not much spark. There used to be something special about them and I don't think there is anymore.

 

Well said.

 

Damn, the Imagine Dragons comparisons are painfully accurate... so disappointed in what this band has become. With many of you here in that Vice Verses is the last thing I enjoyed by these guys, and even that i dont have a lot of desire to go back to outside of a few songs.

Let It Happen actually has a decent amount of muscle, it caught my interest as an opener, but the album fell off hard immediately after.

 

Congratulations everyone... was tempted to buy this but definitely not going to after the reaction in this thread. Might need to have a listen on Spotify just to see what I’m not missing, ha!

(Last Switchfoot album I listened to was Nothing Is Sound.)

 

Nothing is Sound was their peak imo. That album was and still is a special one for me.

 

Imagine going straight from Nothing Is Sound straight to this new music, yikes

 

It holds up damn well too. Got a copy on vinyl for 10 bucks on Black Friday.

 

Learning to Breathe, Beautiful Letdown, Nothing is Sound and Hello Hurricane are all albums that I associate with really important times in my life. The Four Seasons eps also.

 

Yeah I’m listening to Nothing is Sound now and it’s bittersweet. Holds up so well and is so good, but is tinged with “what the fuck happened to this band?”

 

Also, it is absolutely insane to me that Nothing is Sound came out 14 years ago. Wow.

 

2005 was one of the best years for music. So many of my all time favourites came out then.

 

I'm on my first listen, I kept thinking Imagine Dragons on every other song and it sounds like I'm not alone.

I do think Dig New Streams is pretty rad. Reminds me of New Way to Be Human-era Switchfoot.

The last 3 albums have pretty much just been songs tailor-made to be played in the loudspeakers of mega church auditoriums. Once Jon stopped singing about entropy, atrophy, and railing against The Man this band went downhill.

 

I'm ready for him to never use the words Shadow, Light, Darkness and Star again. The list of lazy images he has exhausted is surely longer than that as well at this point.

 

I remember being blown away by Hello Hurricane, and I still go back to it quite often. That secondary “peak” in amazing music in the alternative genre between 2008-2010 is so underrated, there were so many bands putting out amazing records at that time.

Perhaps the biggest shame is how rare it is for a band to return to their previous form, it seems as if in the realm of artistic growth, once a band reaches this type of musicianship, they rarely go back. I don’t connect with these songs at all and I find them quite bland, boring and uninspiring. I am certain they mean the world to the band, but they just don’t do it for me at all.

 

Europe tour with Bon Jovi. Pretty big for them.

 

I wish I liked this album more. Nothing's stuck with me since Vice Verses though.