pretty sure this thread would completely die if the bimonthly reassessment and ranking of New Again went somewhere else. it's not like we do anything else in here!
The only misses for me on self-titled are Money, Faith, and This Is All Now, but you could take a few of the demos from the deluxe, replace those songs and it would probably be in my top 3.
Eh, the demos are pretty whatever to me. The whole known body of work that is the self-titled era has no more than an EP's worth of material that I'm into. "This is All Now" rules and is clearly top tier TBS, though, lol. Dunno how one listens to that album, considers it mostly quite good, and then picks that as one to cut.
imo new again is more consistent than the s/t but they're about equal in my mind, their faults are just different, e.g. i'm guessing adam's voice is worked over on the s/t but i think he sounds pretty good there, and he sounds just awful on new again
"you were right" is one of my absolute favorite tbs songs, it should've been officially released in some fucking capacity (other than unstreamable bonus disc) already i run cooler on the remaining demos than most ppl in this thread, for instance i prefer "you got me" to "morning sickness" even though the vibe of the latter is something i wanted them to tap into more on the actual record
finally, if someone told me new again was their favorite tbs record, i could almost guess where they were coming from, because it is like an alternate universe taking back sunday where their grungier and weirder aspects were more foregrounded. it's a messy record but some people like mess. to my knowledge no one has ever said the s/t is their favorite tbs record
Saw TBS last night and my friends and I had a wager on how many times Adam would say "Ladies and gentleman, John Nolan on the gee-tar!"
John sobbing, desperately trying to remove the instrument from his body, while Adam stands there in a trance, eyes rolled back, pointing and repeatedly uttering, "Ladies and gentleman, John Nolan on the gee-tar!"