Red Mosquito

In fact, new track ranking:
Infallible
Yellow Moon
Mind Your Manners
Pendulum
Sirens
My Father's Son
Future Days
Let The Records Play
Swallowed Whole
Sleeping By Myself
Lightning Bolt
Getaway

I fucking love Sirens. So much.

This is one of the few CDs I can get Ellie to listen to in the car so it still gets a lot of play (she also likes st. Vincent and was showing some interest yesterday in Tom waits).

Mind your manners and lightning bolt are definitely 1 and 2

Pendulum, sleeping by myself, infallible, sirens, and yellow moon go back and forth with each other.

Then: future days
Swallowed whole
My father's son
Getaway
Let the records play (still a pretty good song)

Still only a handful of top tier songs, but lots of very good ones and not a single song I dislike.

Tier 1 - great songs

01. Lightning Bolt
02. Pendulum
03. Yellow Moon
----------------------------------
Tier 2 - very good

04. Infallible
05. Getaway
06. Mind Your Manners
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Tier 3 - good

07. My Father's Son
08. Sirens
09. Let The Records Play
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Tier 4 - crappy

10. Future Days
11. Swallowed Whole
12. Sleeping By Myself

Great: ...
Good: ...
Decent: Pendulum, Getaway, Infallible
Meh: Sirens, My Father' Son, Mind Your Manners
Bad: everything else

Swallowed Whole
Pendulum
My Father's Son
Infallible
Sleeping By Myself
Sirens
Lightning Bolt
Yellow Moon
Let the Records Play
Getaway
Future Days
Mind Your Manners

Strat wrote:I fucking love Sirens. So much.

Oh god me too! Those first six songs on my list are staunchly in the FUCKING LOVE IT category.

Love: Getaway, Sirens, Lightning Bolt, Infallible, Pendulum, Swallowed Whole, Yellow Moon

Like: Mind Your Manners, Let The Records Play, Sleeping By Myself, Future Days

Meh: My Father's Son

Kevin Davis wrote:Swallowed Whole
Pendulum
My Father's Son
Infallible
Sleeping By Myself
Sirens
Lightning Bolt
Yellow Moon
Let the Records Play
Getaway
Future Days
Mind Your Manners

This is pretty damned close to my list. I don't hate MYM as much as you do, and I'd put Sleeping By Myself even higher, but other than that...

Sirens > Pendulum

Mike wrote:Sirens > Pendulum

incorrect

getaway
Lightning bolt
Pendulum
Infallible
MYM
My fathers son
Yellow moon
Ltrp
Swallowed hole
Sirens
Future days
SBM

I thought about this album yesterday...

And I thought that it is actually a better collection of songs than it is a good album. There's no statement or purpose or viscerality or anything else than the microcosms of songs on their own, filed next to each other with a coherent artwork and streamlined production. It's hard to root for something like that unless it's recorded frantically live or almost live and that the "message" is the urge to get it out. LB isn't that at all. Some songs on it fare much better when out of the lacklustre context of the album. To the risk of repeating what I've already said, it stinks "band compromises" but it's not all crap. It's simply a cheap offering with a few nuggets tossed in.

durdencommatyler wrote:

Strat wrote:I fucking love Sirens. So much.

Oh god me too! Those first six songs on my list are staunchly in the FUCKING LOVE IT category.

Sirens IS good.

Mind Your Manners (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Lightning Bolt (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Sleeping By Myself (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
My Fathers Son (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Yellow Moon (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Swallowed Whole (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Pendulum (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Infallible (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Getaway (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Let The Records Play (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Sirens (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
Future Days (Lightning Bolt, 2013)

This is not a bad album. But I don't think I can yet say that it's "good". Maybe one day, one day....

mastaflatch wrote:I thought about this album yesterday...

And I thought that it is actually a better collection of songs than it is a good album. There's no statement or purpose or viscerality or anything else than the microcosms of songs on their own, filed next to each other with a coherent artwork and streamlined production. It's hard to root for something like that unless it's recorded frantically live or almost live and that the "message" is the urge to get it out. LB isn't that at all. Some songs on it fare much better when out of the lacklustre context of the album. To the risk of repeating what I've already said, it stinks "band compromises" but it's not all crap. It's simply a cheap offering with a few nuggets tossed in.

I can agree with this. The whole is much less than the sum of its parts.

I think there are some threads that do unite the album but I agree that, especially compared to the previous records, there is less thematic unity here than we've seen previously--and it is definitely an album where the songs are not enhanced in any particular way by playing them all together.

Strong collection of individual songs, though

the somewhat bland and featureless production probably exacerbates the problem. As individual songs appearing on shuffle this is less of a problem. The sameness becomes more of an issue as you start to hear the songs in sequence. As opposed to the issues on an album like S/T, where the problems are contained more in within the songs themselves (if that makes sense). It doesn't really get worse as S/T goes on.

Backspacer is similar in this regard. Many of the songs individually feel light. On their own this is fine, and if you have backspacer songs randomly come up on shuffle their unencumbered nature is actually a bit refreshing. But an album full of those songs, without the context provided by the previous records, can make the songs feel thinner than they are.

I do enjoy these tunes more when heard one off in the midst of other things. Even sirens is ok in the right setting. It's just this album is, for the most part, the wrong setting for many of these.

I mean, sirens after my father's son? Who possibly put those two together and said, "yeah, that's good."?