citrus
Clever Kid
"Lets everyone act like a goddamn professional!"
Posts: 103
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Post by citrus on Mar 28, 2014 3:29:20 GMT -5
To be fair, the reviews are written by two different persons. So even if HIW was decent (6.2) to Deusner, it's quite possible that this Thompson guy thinks it's disastrous. Even though I think that's a pretty wild exaggeration. True. I just think linking to that review within that sentence and subsequently showing your own publication seemingly refute your views was an interesting choice. But that's just like uh...his opinion, Man. Let us never forget this.
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stringer
Has Status
Seein' my duty clear.
Posts: 2,702
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Post by stringer on Mar 28, 2014 3:38:01 GMT -5
Thats bullshit. Lateralus is a great record.
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stringer
Has Status
Seein' my duty clear.
Posts: 2,702
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Post by stringer on Mar 28, 2014 3:40:54 GMT -5
I really think every THS album is dark except BAGIA Absolutely
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Post by dubill on Mar 28, 2014 7:37:59 GMT -5
"...by swinging for the back rows, they seemed to neglect all those weird kids up front..."
Hey guys we got a mention on Pitchfork!! Awesome!!
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Post by doctoracula on Mar 28, 2014 7:40:02 GMT -5
6.4 isn't BAD, necessarily. The new Pixies EPs have gotten 1s and 2s
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Post by infinitejest on Mar 28, 2014 8:00:44 GMT -5
It's an alright review. I really think the album deserves better, but this guy's a fairly sensible writer.
BTW, am I the only guy who's having a really wildly different experience with the vinyl sonically than the MP3s? I don't know about how the CD sounds.
I've listened to the vinyl on my regular earbuds and on my Sennheiser headphones proper. Especially on the latter, the vinyl sounds much nicer, with Craig more audible and legible and the guitars a lot sharper, same with the drums. The MP3s, whether on headphones or not, just seem ultra compressed in comparison and sound like the Pitchfork guy suggests they do. I know some of this might be due to fundamental vinyl/mp3 differences, but it seems exceptionally pronounced in this case.
And no, my MP3 player does not have any custom equalizer stuff going on.
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mcstevepants
Hoodrat
Shaky but still tryin' to shake it.
Posts: 400
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Post by mcstevepants on Mar 28, 2014 8:10:55 GMT -5
The most important thing here is that I was right.
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Post by clarence5ybr on Mar 28, 2014 8:17:17 GMT -5
Ah Pitchfork. When Lifter Puller's Fiestas + Fiascos came out in 2000, Pitchfork gave it a 3.2, with lines in the review including: The best thing about Fiestas and Fiascos, the new LP by Minneapolis' Lifter Puller, is that most songs are under two minutes long, while the whole sprawling masterpiece clocks in at a merciful 30 minutes.
Admittedly by no fault of his own, Craig Finn has inherited one of the most nasal, obnoxious voices in music. He makes full use of his propensity to annoy by ensuring that his lyrics are proportionately disagreeable. You can check out the full review as archived on the Wayback Machine here: link to Pitchfork's original F + F reviewFast forward to 2009 when THS were critical darlings: Pitchfork purged the original review from their website and posted a new review giving F + F an 8.8 (ironically enough, that review starts with the line "How many people became Lifter Puller fans between 2000 and 2003?").
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Post by infinitejest on Mar 28, 2014 8:27:41 GMT -5
Ah Pitchfork. When Lifter Puller's Fiestas + Fiascos came out in 2000, Pitchfork gave it a 3.2, with lines in the review including: The best thing about Fiestas and Fiascos, the new LP by Minneapolis' Lifter Puller, is that most songs are under two minutes long, while the whole sprawling masterpiece clocks in at a merciful 30 minutes.
Admittedly by no fault of his own, Craig Finn has inherited one of the most nasal, obnoxious voices in music. He makes full use of his propensity to annoy by ensuring that his lyrics are proportionately disagreeable. You can check out the full review as archived on the Wayback Machine here: link to Pitchfork's original F + F reviewFast forward to 2009 when THS were critical darlings: Pitchfork purged the original review from their website and posted a new review giving F + F an 8.8 (ironically enough, that review starts with the line "How many people became Lifter Puller fans between 2000 and 2003?"). Oh, that's nowhere near as bad as: pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/184-i-get-wet/pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16836-i-get-wet/
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bigontheinside
Midnight Hauler
If you don't know the words, don't sing along
Posts: 1,478
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Post by bigontheinside on Mar 28, 2014 8:35:41 GMT -5
I'm just waiting for the needle drop review honestly.
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Post by clarence5ybr on Mar 28, 2014 8:41:00 GMT -5
That's a good one--0.6 to 8.6 after 10 years! At least in their defense regarding the Andrew WK reviews, the original review is still on the Pitchfork site instead of being purged, and the second review opens with a long paragraph acknowledging the earlier review. The F + F review saga feels creepily like a totalitarian government completely rewriting history books so they don't seem to have any egg on their face.
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Post by Matt Jones on Mar 28, 2014 8:43:51 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over.
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Post by infinitejest on Mar 28, 2014 8:49:21 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over. Again, I feel the same way when I listen to the digital copy, but the vinyl sounds alright. I'm starting to think I'm nuts, cause I haven't seen anybody else comment on this in any of the threads. It's still not the expansive, simple, classic production the band for some reason has never properly embraced. But it sounds a whole lot better to me on vinyl and entirely different in terms of how the guitars etc. interact with Craig's vocals.
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Post by runandrewrun on Mar 28, 2014 8:59:47 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over. Agree wholeheartedly. Let's put it this way: I have yet to listen to the album and not be distracted by the production. Which, to me, is the opposite of what should be the case. The production should allow the songs to flourish, not conflict with them.
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Post by Matt Jones on Mar 28, 2014 9:03:12 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over. Agree wholeheartedly. Let's put it this way: I have yet to listen to the album and not be distracted by the production. Which, to me, is the opposite of what should be the case. The production should allow the songs to flourish, not conflict with them. Totally agree. The record is all bass and lower mids. All the treble is sucked into background parts, or washed with reverb.
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Post by bricktop on Mar 28, 2014 9:06:26 GMT -5
Pitchfork is the most stuck-up, pretentious place on the internet.
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Post by dubill on Mar 28, 2014 9:10:40 GMT -5
Pitchfork is the most stuck-up, pretentious place on the internet. I give this a 9.4 - Best New Review
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Admin
Midnight Hauler
Posts: 2,434
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Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2014 9:30:19 GMT -5
Totally agree. The record is all bass and lower mids. All the treble is sucked into background parts, or washed with reverb. YOU'RE WASHED WITH REVERB!
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Post by doctoracula on Mar 28, 2014 9:51:00 GMT -5
Everyone complains about pitchfork and hates it, but everyone reads it and gets mad when their reviewers have differing opinions. It's just a website.
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Post by thunderbirdcarpet on Mar 28, 2014 9:56:52 GMT -5
You know, I don't disagree much with the Pitchfork assessment of the lyrics... The first four albums are hyper-specific with locations and names and settings, and because of the specificity, they become universal to the listener. The specifics are evocative and challenging.
HiW and Teeth Dreams, though, both seem to set very general 'moods' rather than telling a story.
Just compare the urgency and vividness of "Meet me right in front of the Rainbow Foods" with "We were living in the sweet part of the city. The part with the bars and restaurants." The second tries for universality, but just ends up sounding lazy and half-cooked.
I wonder how much, if any, of this is related to an interview I read (somewhere) with Craig talking about a new conscious effort to avoid writing lyrics that lead to or are ripe for parody (like the FakeCraigFinn twitter), or another interview where he said that he was less confident in his writing now than he was 10 years ago. Like, if trying to avoid expectation has also made him avoid what made his lyrics great?
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Post by dealwiththedealers on Mar 28, 2014 9:58:53 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over. I'm not sure we're listening to the same records. To my ears, the guitars on Teeth Dreams sound fucking incredible. The tone on The Only Thing chorus, the huge riffs of Big Cig thru Runner's High, the OWTB solo... just incredible sonic quality. Beats the piss out of the crunchy, processed, digitized guitars all over HiW (exhibit: Soft In The Center).
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Post by Andy on Mar 28, 2014 10:05:46 GMT -5
Totally agree. The record is all bass and lower mids. All the treble is sucked into background parts, or washed with reverb. YOU'RE WASHED WITH REVERB! YOU'RE WASHED WITH REVERB!Fixed that for you, Brendan.
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Post by infinitejest on Mar 28, 2014 10:23:28 GMT -5
You know, I don't disagree much with the Pitchfork assessment of the lyrics... The first four albums are hyper-specific with locations and names and settings, and because of the specificity, they become universal to the listener. The specifics are evocative and challenging. HiW and Teeth Dreams, though, both seem to set very general 'moods' rather than telling a story. Just compare the urgency and vividness of "Meet me right in front of the Rainbow Foods" with "We were living in the sweet part of the city. The part with the bars and restaurants." The second tries for universality, but just ends up sounding lazy and half-cooked. I wonder how much, if any, of this is related to an interview I read (somewhere) with Craig talking about a new conscious effort to avoid writing lyrics that lead to or are ripe for parody (like the FakeCraigFinn twitter), or another interview where he said that he was less confident in his writing now than he was 10 years ago. Like, if trying to avoid expectation has also made him avoid what made his lyrics great? Disagree. Not re HiW, but re Teeth Dreams. The new album is full of really interesting stories. There is an amount of specificity, just not the details of Separation Sunday. It feels more like Stay Positive lyrically than HiW. I'm not at all convinced by the Pitchfork reviewer's arguments, though I understand where he's coming from. The new record's more elliptical on a narrative level, but it's really not the same fuzzy generalized thing that was going on w/r/t HiW. I mean: "Spinners," "Big Cig," "Oaks, "Frighten You" all seem very accomplished pieces of storytelling to me. "The Ambassador" and "Almost Everything," too. Stuff like "On with the Business" has story connections, but is mostly thematically oriented. There's nothing wrong with that, exactly. What is bullshit is stuff like some songs on HiW, where fuzzy descriptors stand in for any real thematic OR narrative content. The new record alternates between the two, but it's never serving up bullshit and is always substantial. No point in trying to replicate Separation Sunday. That kinda shit only happens every once in a while. Though I think it's easily his best work. I'm not all that big a fan of Almost Killed Me, though, w/r/t Finn's lyrics. A lot of that stuff is fun wordplay but kinda meaningless when you boil it down. Finn's fears are legitimate. It's not that I think he would've become a self-parody, but it is true that in rock n' roll, in poetry, in fiction, it's real easy to become a self-parody. The lyric that pisses me off the most on Teeth Dreams is the "when there weren't so much police" line. But that's just a grammar thing. It really should either be "when there wasn't so much police" or "when there weren't so many police." Unless I've just revealed myself to be an absolute imbecile.
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Post by jessicalyn on Mar 28, 2014 10:25:03 GMT -5
Honestly, I pretty much agree with Pitchfork 100%. The songs are great, it has great playing, the band sounds like they're back on track. The production is a HUGE detriment to it though. It sounds like you're listening to it with blankets over the speakers, or from the next room over. I totally agree. I was hoping it was just the compressed files, but I got the CD and it's just as muffled and weird. I just don't understand why someone would make a Hold Steady album with vocals that are so muddy.
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Admin
Midnight Hauler
Posts: 2,434
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Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2014 10:31:18 GMT -5
YOU'RE WASHED WITH REVERB! YOU'RE WASHED WITH REVERB!Fixed that for you, Brendan. Thanks, Andy.
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