Album Rating: 5.0
Ok, early days ranked/rated - be interesting how this changes...
1. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You [5] the most Mac tune? this seems to mark their progression and 'where they're at right now' the most, so a good choice for T/T
2. Spud Infinity [5] when the album really 'announces itself', possibly the most important song on the album - really
3. Promise is a Pendulum [5] stunning Lenker solo effort as we've come to expect, supreme vocal phrasing etc
4. Simulation Swarm [5] like an upgrade on a lot of the stuff that made UFOF so great
5. The Only Place [4.5] classic typical Big Thief, the most Big Thief'y moment and one of the best here
6. Blurred View [4.5] this I adored at first but it has just dropped a little on repeat plays
7. Sparrow [4.5]
8. Little Things [4.5]
9. Time Escaping [4.5]
10. Certainty [4]
11. Red Moon [4]
12. Change [4]
13. No Reason [4] the most Sufjan tune, a tiny bit too twee for me maybe, still good
14. Blue Lightning [4]
15. Wake Me Up to Drive [4]
16. Dried Roses [4]
17. Love Love Love [4] might be a 3.5 down the line
18. Flower of Blood [3.5] prob underrating but just seems not as good as I want it to be so far
19. 12,000 Lines [3.5] still a really nice duet, might be underrating, a bit 'standard'? :/
20. Heavy Bend [3.5] I mean I still like it but does seem more a pacing inclusion than anything
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Album Rating: 4.0
love love love might be my least fave. cant rank it all yet but sparrow, certainty, t/t, little things, and simulation swarm might be my top 5.
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Album Rating: 5.0
loving that 5, Doof ;)
the title track is definitely special
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Album Rating: 4.7
the only place is insane
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Album Rating: 4.0
much of the second half just hasn’t landed with me yet, it’s a bit passive and underwhelms after the breakneck creativity in the first. if it ended on blurred view I think it’d still be getting as lauded as it is now so….
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Album Rating: 4.0
simulation swarm is so damn good
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Album Rating: 4.5
yeah robert that may be my first go fave
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Album Rating: 4.5
Promise Is A Pendulum totally sucks. It should have been a 30 second interlude or something.
This album is wildly inconsistent. Some of their best stuff mixed with some titanic snoozers. Certainty through to Flower of Blood is such a fantastic stretch. Blurred Vision isn't bad but a bit boring, then Red Moon comes on and suddenly I realize why people are saying this has both good and bad country songs. Wake Me Up sucks, Promise Is A Pendulum seems intent to test my patience. 12,000 Miles is similarly drab and uneventful. Things kind of pick back up after that though.
Tonally this is all over the place. I don't think it's properly sequenced, but I feel like at least a good 6 or 7 songs could be outright omitted and this would be a fantastic album at that point.
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Album Rating: 4.5
The Only Place is great but after one listen it isn't as big a highlight as some of the earlier cuts on here. I still need to hear this a couple more times, but there are a handful of songs I just don't see warming up to. I think most of the problems lie within the 3Q, and the opener which I've heard twice now and don't care for at all
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Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off
I'm sorta antithetical to Doof re double albums - his affinity for 'em is inversely proportional to my enmity. Can probably count on one hand the number of double LPs that I truly adore, and even those I love (e.g. THE RIVER) never escape without at least a few pockets of filler.
Originally found that to be the case here - felt like a 4.0 album mixed with a 3.0 album. I was convinced you could've made a 45-minute masterpiece from the material here. But the more I listen to this, the more I grow genuinely fond of tracks that didn't totally click for me the first time around. Would not be surprised to see this eventually bump to a 4.0 overall once I can be arsed re-rating the tracks at some point. But I'll say that it's a great album whose minor blemishes are slowly 'winning me over'.
Top 5 (6) at the moment:
1. Little Things (pleb pick but who cares, this track rips)
2. Simulation Swarm
3. Flower of Blood
4. Time Escaping
5. No Reason / Certainty
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Album Rating: 4.5
The title track is among my favourites, and I agree with Doof about it sounding a lot like Fleetwood Mac. Flower of Blood seems underrated early on, one of their more atmospheric songs to date. Simulation Swarm, Little Things, Certainty, and Dried Roses are also just chef's kiss. Also the ending to Sparrow is a big highlight
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Album Rating: 5.0
Yeah double albums you just have to relax into, they're even allowed the occasional shit track ('Tusk' has at least one, 'The White Album' certainly does, 'Physical Graffiti' has a couple I'm not major about) and I forgive it for the whole spirit of the enterprise/ambitious sprawl thing.
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Album Rating: 5.0
Fleetwood Mac. I couldn't quite place what so much of this sounds like and that's the one.
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Album Rating: 4.5
Yeah that's a fair point. I consider The White Album the Beatles best, but it has a few kind of shit songs lol. When I'm listening to the best cuts from this album I want to slap a 5 on it. For sure I like this 10x more than Two Hands, but some tracks like the opener I just can't crack lol. Maybe they're not shit songs but I find them boring
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Album Rating: 5.0
'much of the second half just hasn’t landed with me yet, it’s a bit passive and underwhelms after the breakneck creativity in the first. if it ended on blurred view I think it’d still be getting as lauded as it is now so….'
yeah, I think if this had been released as two albums (1-10, 11-20) then the first album would be a 5 and the second a 4.5 (and a lower 4.5 than 'U.F.O.F.' for me). Promise, Pendulum and The Only Place are enough perfect songs to my tastes to have warranted a 4.5 though. I will definitely try listening to tracks 11-20 on their own soon to double check how that stretch hangs together.
overall a 5 as I'm more a 'good things accumulated' in rating albums than a 'I'm a perfectionist and I can't look past these two songs not being perfect' rater (not that I cant respect that school of thought, I just find it easy to gloss over one or two lesser songs if everything else is strong).
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Album Rating: 4.0
I’m ambivalent towards the opener but I will say it leads fantastically into time escaping
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Album Rating: 5.0
The first three songs just work for me....low key opener, up tempo experimental but still somewhat standoffish second song...break the tension totally happy hoedown catchy third song.
If the three very best songs kicked off the album that wouldn't be right on a two hour album.
I do like how the male backing vocals are on the first song and then are used sparingly at different points during the rest of the tracklist (well, mainly on the country'ish songs as Boney pointed out earlier) - their voices mesh well.
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I’m not going anywhere near this.
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this really takes its time to sink its claws in you
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page turn
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