Don’t think it’s changed that much. Very good album that is a little one note, but it’s a good note. (I just like their songs like “Ready” and “What You Want” a lot when they mix it up and lean into their melody side.) And I can get over / ignore what I dislike about how it sounds, but the harshness does make itself seen by the last three tracks.
Also surprised to hear there’s mixed reactions to MCS. I haven’t gotten into any of their albums since Dinosaur Life and I’ve been absolutely obsessed with this new one.
I am pretty tepid on the new MCS, even if I still like it. Just doesn’t quite get me going the way I wanted it to. Very excited for this one, though.
Nice! I'd be interested to hear where you'd rank it in their discography over the coming months -> next year. I'd always say for nostalgia, that I love Say It Like You Mean It, but I would say Direction is their best album overall.
What gets me so curious about hearing this album is how much the singles are imbued with an OG emo flair that didn't seem as on the forefront before. I often notice that for veteran bands, for some, the more they continue to put out albums 20 years and beyond in, the more they sound like their influences. I'm thinking of AFI currently. Wonder if that's the case for TSL too? I'm in for a midwest emo inspired album anyway.
Damn, no on time release for the New Zealanders??? I suppose they will be listening along with me at midnight.
“We had no idea that our baby girl was there with us as we were shooting this album cover and doing these videos and stuff,” he says. “It’s crazy looking at the album cover now and knowing that Eternal Youth has this whole new meaning.” pretty cool
Curveball is good, but yeah, very little variety on this so far and the production does not help in that regard. Keep in mind I’m not a huge TSL fan and really only listened to this because of Circulate. It’s solid though. Edit: Enjoyment is great! Actually, this album really picked up for me in the second half.
Even if this is a perfect record from them I will not be ranking this higher than the previous three for probably 5 years. I have so much time invested in their work that it’ll be so difficult to immediately try to rank it amongst their albums.
Favorites after first listen: Defeating the purpose + pivot Eternal Youth Enjoyment Loved it, love this band. Wish Kenny changed up the vocal delivery a bit more like he does on the beginning of Enjoyment. I also hate to be the guy who talks about production, specifically with Will Yip because I feel like this always comes up…. But do the vocals sounds like fuzzy and hard to hear clearly on the record? Maybe that’s the vibe they are going for or it’s just Ken’s vocals maturing. Either way, I was struggling to hear the lyrics during parts of the record.
He can I definitely still hit those notes as we hear on Enjoyment so I can only assume that it is a style choice. I did find it a bit jarring a few months back when they came out with the Eternal Youth single.
Yeah the small sample of the cleaner sounding vocals at the beginning of Enjoyment left me wanting more.
just going to get it out of the way and not dwell on it the production here is not my favorite ok that is all.
Going to wait until tomorrow to jump in when I can actually focus. I’ve replayed the singles a million times over and haven’t gotten even the slightest bit tired of them. So excited for this.