There are a lot of other (great) records I remember listening to a lot that summer (Bon Iver, Bon Iver, Matt Nathanson's Modern Love, Butch Walker's The Spade, The Damnwells' No One Listens to the Band Anymore), but I think War Paint was every other album I played.
Haha, new pressing is good. The current pressing of Reach for the Sun is also good. I bought them both when they came out.
oh yeah, i forgot how bad the pressing of War Paint was. RFTS was fine for me. I have the white one, but i had a black one that sounded good too.
i think my old rfts is black and it sounds fine. War Paint was probably my worst sounding record forever lol, and it’s not like i have really high standards
I greatly appreciate your generosity. I’m going to try and find a way to make it work, even if I can’t buy it until I secure a new job.
Some early thoughts... There are so many joyous Graduate sounding parts on this... praise be Matt. Kennedy. AJs voice sounds a lot better than the last album which is good to hear. Drum sounds are pretty great and spot on throughout. The synth flourishes throughout are brilliant. Really enjoy 'SO/SD' because of that. I think everything is solid - apart from Better Light which I'm not sure on at the moment - and its very reminiscent of my listens to RFTS were I thought everything was solid and it slowly started to creep into my consciousness. I'll love this soon.
Starting Over/Slow Down reminds me so much of Taking Back Sunday when AJ’s vocal lines start getting layered.
About to listen to this while going on my second run of the day on some canyon trails. It gonna be a nice/easy recovery run while getting lost in the melodies. I love listening to spacey music on recovery runs. It keeps me grounded. I'm really excited to put this to the test.
I’ve said this endlessly over the last decade but Reach for the Sun and War Paint are probably my two top played albums of all time and defined my entire high school life. I remember discovering RFTS on AP.net and listening to the Purevolume stream over and over before getting it. I remember getting my War Paint advance back when I did album reviews for AP.net and playing it all summer non-stop in 2011. It was my number 1 album on my staff EOTY list that year. I still play them almost weekly and they mean the world to me. They’re classics to me at this point and both are top 10, if not top 5. War Paint may be number 1 or 2 at this point. Easily the two most formative records of any singular band for me in my life. I’ve enjoyed the last two records a bit - I’ve loved a few songs, some have grown on me more - but nothing has captured that magic again. I’ve listened to this record 4 times today, with my first time being during a morning walk as the sun was coming up. It’s something special. Can’t wait to see them live again next month for the first time since the Golden Record era. It’ll be my 4th time I believe.
It Is Real is such a jam ham A lot of this reminds me of something I can’t quite place - a very specific era of pop rock. The Ataris, maybe? That one really good underrated sugarcult album with the palm trees? Idk. In any case, this is a very good and very impressive record from a band that once meant so much to me and one that I wasn’t sure would ever release another album as consistent as this
This is the kind of album where after just a few listens I feel like I’ve been hearing these songs for years