RFTS is my favorite album of theirs, but yeah, this is my fave song too. No other chorus they ever wrote hit me quite the way this one did. I guess "Surfaced" might come close, though. Also, I'm kind of surprised at how split the opinions are on GR in here.
I like to just pretend Golden Record doesnt exist and they broke up after War Paint. But how they could let something so great fall apart and disband is beyond anything i could ever comprehend. Losing this band was like losing a relative and ill miss them forever.
Title track, Good Things, No One's Gonna Need You More and Work In Progress all rule in addition, I would say, and the album overall is solid.
Totally get this thought, because I loved the first two records. But even if they hadn't let it fall apart, I don't know that they could have kept going. I said this before, but when I saw them play there was hardly anyone there. I was blown away, I thought they had a bigger following. Granted my market probably isn't the biggest (WI) but there's no way they were comfortably living. Then add in AJ having a child. I don't think they could've sustained that cost, especially with how Golden Record was met and their reputation at that time.
I love that the GR discussion comes up pretty much every 6 months haha. I actively try to listen to/like Golden Record more than I've tried to like almost any record in the past 5 or so years and just don't. I love "Catholic Girls" and "Sins" and like "Knives" but that's it. RFTS and WP are still two of my top played albums ever and among my favorites by far. I think WP is a considerably better album overall, but I still go back and forth on which one I like more personally since they both mean so much to me.
I don't think any band breakup has ever hit me harder. Definitely felt like losing a piece of my past. I actually wrote about that at the time, alongside the equally terrible HIMYM ending. Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: The Yellow Umbrella: Losing my past in the endings of "How I Met Your Mother" and The Dangerous Summer This is nuts to me. "Everyone Left" is great, but it's probably bottom half of that record for me.
I think GR would be considerably better if AJ didn't sound like he'd just been punched in the trachea before going in to record it.
I don't think Golden Record is a bad LP per se, it has a lot of good tracks, It's just exhausting, so exhausting to listen to full through. It isn't as easily digest-able as their first two albums are, and I think a lot of that has to do with the scrapey / raspy vocals, lack of hooks (even though the song writing is quite interesting), and poor track listening. The album has a few vary salient flaws that significantly hinders my enjoyment of it.
I just think GR lacks the magic of the first two. Maybe it's because I have next to no nostalgic connection to it, whereas the other two were very important at very specific moments in my life. Either way, it will never be a record that I "love."
I don't think it's just nostalgia. I think the first two were just straight up better. Better hooks, better vocals, better lyrics, better instrumentation.
Miles Apart has the "magic" I think. Catholic Girls too, maybe to a slightly lesser extent. Other than that, I agree it's missing something
I think what its missing is bryans piece of the magical pie. Matt kennedy tried to emulate it but couldnt. He couldnt emote through his instrument the way bryan could. Also AJs vocal delivery was not so great that time around.
Yeah, those are the two that get closest to that feeling. They're just surrounded by songs that don't reach the same heights.
Thay always sounded good and I liked the change in AJ's voice on GR, it was really raspy at times, and it did ruin some melodies maybe, but it was different, which is still good to me :)) To add to the discussion - There's not a single song by them I'd hate, or that would let me down so much like for example, I don't know, "That's My Jam" by Relient K hah ;p so I can't really hate on GR, I think it doesn't suck that much ;o Man that's a good piece of writing, I've just read that in the office in my spare time :) although I disagree about HIMYM, you said you can start looking at the series as at a long con, but well yeah exactly - that's what life is ;p I wasn't happy with that ending too, and it wasn't perfectly arragned, but it was, saddly, closer to being real, and I liked it in the end... But that's a totally different topic I guess ;D
I think Fog is the worst TDS song, though there are several on War Paint that come close. I've absolutely never gotten the love for Work in Progress or especially Parachute, those are awfully weak songs imo. Everything on RFTS destroys that stuff.
We will wait in the fog is one of the better songs on golden record because of the verses and work in progress is probably their best song.
"Parachute" is definitely my least favorite song on War Paint, but it's a long, long way from the dregs of Golden Record.
I need to give War Paint another listen. Reach for the Sun is a top 10 all time album for me but I just didn't get into War Paint for some reason. I know that most people who loved RftS also loved War Paint, so maybe I was just in a weird mood for a whole summer or something lol. Golden Record I didn't like but I think that's just because it generally wasn't great.