Yep. I remember thinking The Wonder Years might have something like this in them after "Cigarettes & Saints," but I just wasn't into their last record at all.
Also, listening to Golden Record (my re-sequenced version) and this holds up better than I thought. "Catholic Girls" really is an incredible gut-punch. Love that song.
I thought No Closer to Heaven was a really sloppy, clunky attempt at doing something a little different, aside from that song. I did like parts of the last album, but overall I’d have to say I think I overestimated their ability to pull off a jump like this.
Waking up to even more love in this thread is awesome. Seeing the excitement for an album like this, a band like this, is awesome. I had a hunch this was something special ... seems to be coming true.
“It is real” is crazy. It’s got this kinda constant happy go lucky riff that seemingly doesn’t change much, and I’m happy and bobbin my head but then it keeps droning on somethin’ happens part way through where the happiness feels contrived. Then by the end when everything drops out and it’s just AJ, im sad. What a whirlwind, haha. That song needs to be on a movie soundtrack.
I've had rough cuts of some of these songs since December and it's incredible to hear the finished product. Hope this is big for them!
Yeah, I don't go back to that album at all outside of that song. And the last one was okay, but the production/mixing kind of ruined it for me. It hurt my ears. I really thought they were going to take that next step and make a classic after The Greatest Generation, but looking back, I think that's their undeniable peak. I have really complicated feelings about that record because it came out during a not-great period of my life and I associate it a lot with that summer. I also really do think the original sequencing of that record ruins it. One of the few albums where I actually changed the song order in my iTunes.
I thought sister cities was a cosmic size leap for that band and eclipses every album prior by a lot but not sure why we have to bring other bands down to praise this
Didn’t intend to bring them down, just think a number of other bands haven’t been able to do this kind of thing as successfully and that makes this all the more impressive, imo.
The last one is up and down, I think some songs really succeed at progressing their sound, like Flowers, Lightning, and When the Blue Finally Came, but I don’t ever play it all the way through. I realize I might have come off as ripping the band, but really it’s just that the direction they’re going isn’t so much for me. Yeah, I still think the sequencing from Sins to Knives is a little jarring, even though I like all those songs, but at this point I’ve gotten used to it. That record has always clicked for me more than War Paint, but I know that’s unpopular here.
This album is going to be something special. Just from the pre release tracks alone I can tell. BMBTL chorus has been in my head all day
I’m just saying it’s not a great feeling to feel like I have to come in and argue that I do think that band pulled it off because of how much that album means to me, like that’s really not what I want to be doing in this thread and it’s hard to just ignore a comment like that when like I said that album had a massive impact on my life last year. That’s all. But to your point I think there are many, many, many bands who HAVE done this successfully, I don’t think it’s all that rare with the bands I love. I mean there’s a reason I love those bands and there’s a reason I love this band.
I think I listened to their last album maybe once or twice and it didn't leave an impact on me at all (I adore War Paint and Golden Record) so it's nice to be floored by this band once again.
Point well taken, it wasn’t my intent to rip the band but I do realize a lot of people here love that album and I certainly don’t want to invalidate that.
The last album starts and ends really strongly, but I haven’t listened to anything from the middle section since it first came out.