Stay Vicious - ★★★★ 1,000 Years - ★★★ Get Hurt - ★★★★★ Stray Paper - ★ Helter Skeleton - ★★★½ Underneath the Ground - ★★★★★ Rollin' & Tumblin' - ★★★★ Red Violins - ★★★½ Selected Poems - ★★★★ Ain't That a Shame - ★★★ Break Your Heart - ★★ Dark Places - ★★★★★ - - - Mama's Boys - ★★★½ Sweet Morphine - ★★★★½ Halloween - ★★★★ Have Mercy - ★★★★★
I need to listen to Get Hurt again to refresh my evaluation of it but my take on it at the time was that it felt like it was all over the place, and even the songs I really liked seemed to just have one thing that always bothered me. I think Helter Skeleton is a great song except for the first 10-15 seconds or so. Dark Places is a very underrated closer but there's no real 'theme' of the album that I identify with so it doesn't really deliver the same way The Backseats does.
I'd argue that Get Hurt has a very definite theme across the album and it's heartbreak/divorce. It's one of the saddest divorce albums I've heard.
I get that this is what the "theme" is supposed to be but I just don't feel it does a great job at making it resonate when you have songs like Stray Paper and Rollin' and Tumblin' on it. Again, I haven't listened to the album in a while so maybe it will hit me differently now that I'm older, but I remember feeling like they didn't really convey what they were trying to.
Rollin' and Tumblin' may have that upbeat, driving sound - but the lyrics are actually really sad and kinda desperate.
Very, very much so. Stray Paper is full of metaphors about love and desperation to try to save a relationship, too. Get Hurt is thematically great. Musically - yeah, there's some clunkers. But you cannot dispute the underlying thread.
I found that song to be pretty shallow honestly. Maybe that's what you mean by "desperate lyrics" but I just felt like it wasn't up to par for Fallon
I personally love it, but I wasn't arguing that it's really deep or thematically that rich. The lyrics are pretty straight forward. I was just pointing out that I enjoy the sound of the song musically juxtaposed with the really depressing lyrics about an unraveling relationship.
It’s their bottom ranked album for me (hot take, I know), but it sure as shit didn’t deserve the rancor it received at the time.
I also think some of the undeserved hate was that their previous albums were all a bit more cohesive. Get Hurt (especially with the 4 bonus tracks tacked on) was more of a collection of songs than an album. It was a divorce album but the songs didn’t necessarily all fit together in terms of sound. Regardless I still adore it and am thankful for those 16 songs.
There is a better album in the collection of songs from Get Hurt. You open with Have Mercy -> Rollin' & Tumblin' and already you've improved the album greatly.
I am not a Have Mercy first person. Song is too “feels like a weight being lifted off the shoulders” to open a records that’s as heavy content wise. It have always felt like a moment of clarity after you’ve “been through it” song, so I like it at the end.
Is the implication that Have Mercy should be first is that people don't like Stay Vicious? I actually like that song.
I like Stay Vicious but I think Have Mercy does a better job at opening the album. I'd cut Violins, Poems, and Shame, add Have Mercy and Sweet Morphine as the opener and penultimate respectively.