Fuck, this makes me feel very old. I vividly remember listening to this album for the first time and it sure doesn’t feel like 14 years ago…
War Paint is their best record. It has this timeless quality to it I can't explain - it still sounds so fresh and unlike anything anyone was doing at the time (or even now).
The songs themselves are wonderful of course, but the production and arrangement on War Paint are also SO good. It has so many moments where it feels "heavy", but the guitars aren't necessarily doing just big chunky stereotypical "heavy" stuff - I love it so much. It's a wonderful headphone album and I still find new parts in it.
I think Bryan Czap doesn't get enough credit for his guitar work on those first two albums. He was using delays and atmospheric tones and textures in a way that hasn't been explored much in this genre.
Absolutely - that kind of stuff is what helped elevate bands like these guys and The Graduate above the rest of what was going on in the "post pop punk" or whatever you want to call it scene at the time.
This was great. Really heartfelt, and captures the magic of music/memories and the soundtrack of our lives element of it all
Thank you! You've hit upon what is (literally) my big project at the moment: a weekly essay series about those soundtrack of our lives moments. A Dangerous Summer song is coming up in a month or two. https://chorus.fm/tag/my-life-in-35-songs
Awesome! Excited to dive into all this. But the War Paint feelings and your article and everything begs the question, how did Golden Record land for you?
I won't give away too much, but the Dangerous Summer song I chose for this series is actually a Golden Record song, and I do talk about how I felt about that record in the moment. Will share in here when it goes live. I think that one is coming down the pike in a month or so.
Yeah overall that record is towards the bottom of the list, but those two songs are top tier. "I turned my back on the rope tied to my ceiling. There's a reason I dont go there anymore. Cuz I thought that death might bring me healing...until we washed away our sins and the lives that we once lived." That line always gives me chills.
Was listening yesterday to the ultimate single-disc album I made by combining the last two albums and the EP, and man, that thing goes. These guys have gotten more inconsistent with time, but they're still delivering a lot of great songs.
“Fuck Them All” might be my least favorite Dangerous Summer song ever, haha. At least right up there with “Someday.” Don’t particularly like “I Feel More Like Myself” either.