I have a soft spot for S/T because that’s around the time when I went from being a casual fan to a huge fan. There’s a few mid songs but I love Faith, Best Places, This Is All Now, and Doesn’t Feel a Thing Like Falling. I think Happiness Is and Tidal Wave were much better.
New Again would be any other band's best album and I would have loved to hear where they could have gone with another Fazzi album. It's ludicrously better than S/T and was just a weird spot for their career, for sure.
Hey man, I'd rather rehash convos and rank albums than keep speculating on the Mark drama. I did love hearing from the folks who have been having a good time at the recent shows too though.
New Again is great and Fazzi was a solid choice to replace Fred, but knowing Andy Jackson of Hot Rod Circuit was also considered will always be one of my biggest what-ifs with this band.
I struggle to think of any band that this is true for. I'm a New again apologist but that is an insane statement
I call it "Lost Girl core" because it sounds like it could be in the early 2010s show Lost Girl. It has a sleazy, late night out vibe to it (which I'm sure was the intention).
Each reunion album has a parallel to the pre-reunion band. 152 is the closet to a TAYF we’ve gotten from the band since all those live songs. The raw energy is there, but it’s decades older and more refined. I swear Keep Going could be a long lost demo from the original TAYF follow up. Happiness Is… is WYWTB. The guitars sound fuller like they can fill an arena, the songs have a little more edge to them and this sense of longing and maturity. It’s a step above the previous effort. HI is the closest they’ve come to repeating the sound on WYWTB. Flicker Fade reminds me of Decade. Beat Up Car and They Don’t Have Any Friends are cut from the same cloth as Bonus Mosh and The Union. Tidal Wave is Louder Now. These two don't sound all that similar, but they are both solid and in many ways the most radio friendly work they have ever put out. It feels like a group comfortable with each other and knowing how to write a hit. And though I don’t know if this one ended up with a ton of commercial success, songs like Tidal Wave, Can’t Look Back, and Call Come Running are their most single worthy songs since MakeDamnSure and Liar. S/T is New Again. After the excitement of a new (or reunited) lineup wears off, you can see it for what it is. A not terrible, but kind of awkward collection of songs made by a group who don’t quite fit together right now and needed more time and probably a different producer to get the most out of them. Still, there are some classics on here like This Is All Now (I equate it to Swing from NA) and Call Me In The Morning (let’s go with fellow closer, Everything Must Go). TLDR: 152=TAYF, HI=WYWTB, TW=LN, ST=NA.