Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

in a nutshell: meticulously crafted, complete album, terrific lyrics, excellent juxtaposition of melody and harshness, mesmerizing slow passages that build to crushing post rock climaxes, i could go on with the on-paper reasons.



but mostly as a complete album this album makes me feel something ive yet to experience as strongly with any other piece of music, that being that there's something beautiful in all this chaos, and maybe i gave a shit about how other people took this when i was in high school because, as the saying goes, there's no greater zealot than a convert, but now that ire's largely expired. I enjoy it because I do. that's all

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

also holy adam downer wtf even im not that pretentious

Album Rating: 3.0

I enjoy it because I do. That's all

"meticulous crafting" doesn't automatically make for a good record though. look at the composers working in the genre of multiple serialism...they were the most obsessively intricate writers of all time and still their music sounded like total shit (to everyone)

you say that CTTS has "terrific lyrics," Adam Downer, but have never provided actual examples of the lyrics you consider good, i suspect probably because you know i would mercilessly tear them apart and embarrass you by showing how fucking ridiculous their lyrics are. so you try to evade posting lyrics you would claim were great by saying "oh but you're just going in with different assumptions than me man you're just gonna hate them for all the reasons i like them blah blah blah etc."

and polemicizing is a perfectly legitimate rhetorical tool and has been for millenia, StreetlightRock. the fanboys on this site doth protest too much when they complain about it, since they were polemicizing and ganging up on anyone who disliked the album for years before i got here. i personally don't give a shit if someone wants to be mean or vicious in their defense of the album. how about we just not be crybabies and accept really mean statements as long as they're still relevant to the discussion of the album in question?

and personally i find this satiric review to be ten times meaner and more devastating than the geometric proof review

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

also, i mean dude, i like the lyrics you dont like them if i posted my favorite lyrics you would just say they sucked so why should i bother?

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

hey vemeer show us some examples of good lyrics plz

Album Rating: 4.0

An eternal patch on a quilt that hangs from a wall in a throw fraught with our decay...

An eternal patch on a quilt that hangs from a wall in a throw fraught with our decay...

would you like me to give you a detailed analysis of Drew's lyrics?

Album Rating: 1.0

Good lyrics?



There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away

They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets

They scream your name at night in the street

Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet

And in the lonely cool before dawn

You hear their engines rolling on

But when you get to the porch, they're gone on the wind

So Mary, climb in

It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win

i'd love that Helvete, because i'm convinced that people who claim that his lyrics are "pure poetry" or even good have no fucking clue what good writing is

so even if it would be of just a small snippet of Drew's lyrics (that shouldn't be too daunting a task) that would be great haha

Album Rating: 3.0

Our arms would wave like a

desperate windmill

Hoping, hoping to welcome them home

Now we shall touch them

close to our hearts

And what we are

And what we may be

Maybe

Why I have failed

And all I could have been

And am not

And all I had hoped for

And were not

And everything I hoped

And hoped and hoped and hoped for

I prayed in the morning

And I prayed in the evening

And I got not

From the rotgut God

When all the world starts to shiver

And shimmer and shake all around me

And all the worldlight was piecemeal

And peaceless

This is the atomic pain of the worlds

The molecular tears

The final crystalline

structure of misery

the lyrics posted so far are not CTTS.

it's just hilarious how scared a Sputnik Staff member (Adam Downer) is that i'll make him look like an idiot by showing that something he's repeatedly insisted is great writing is shit

if you're going to say they have good lyrics then have some balls and show me some lyrics that exemplify how good they are

Album Rating: 4.0

Wow, u folks are still all fired up here...



I will simply say the particular lyrics I quoted make me ponder what they may mean at length...I'm personally into lyrics that you have to work a bit at to ascribe some meaning, rather than easily digested and relatable crap

all right, let me check out Planewreck's interpretation and just thank him for not being afraid of my criticism

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

sigh...



my favorite lyrics are what lewis quoted from interview at the ruins, but i also like the ending bit "a murmur from the ruins echo softly as the roots undo..." along with random snippets from other songs like "Let them eat shit" and "dance to the sound of his weight bearing back fucking breaking"



have at it

all right, i'm not going to dispute that your interpretation might well be true. in fact, i'm going to assume that it's correct, based on the lyrics you cite. still, that "people get trapped in the box they make for themselves in trying to improve their life" would be the lyrics' theme should only prove their absolute puerility/imbecility. it's the same tired cliche that's been rehashed over and over ever since Solomon (presumably) wrote in Ecclesiastes wrote that "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun."

also, the line "But the only truth is change" is self-contradictory, because it would mean that change is constant, or unchanging. "change is unchanging" makes no sense, and this has been known since Aristotle's critique of Heraclitus. it's logically equivalent to the liar's paradox ("This statement is false")

in the next passage you quote again your interpretation might not be far off. still, the lines "and so we ran, like the wolves were biting, the inhibitions of their prey kept them from screaming" is incredibly convoluted and obscure. the idea of being "self-anointed prey" who then becomes a predator is the same old banal idea of psychological inversion that "we ironically become everything that we hoped/claimed we were not or became the exact opposite of what we claimed we were"

you're spot on with the goofiness, and frankly most of this could have come out of a fifteen-year-old goth chick's private journal

the "let them eat shit from our trembling hands" is an insulting farce of Marie Antoinette's infamous remark about the French people in the leadup to the Revolution. "from our trembling hands" is a worthless addition, needlessly melodramatic, pointlessly prolix (haha)

"dance to the sound of his weight bearing back fucking breaking" -- this whole song but especially this line is pumped full of maudlin sap and an almost schmaltzy sentimentalism. it's excruciatingly cringeworthy, exaggerated cruelty thrown in for cheap emotional effect

also, how do these lyrics relate at all to the whole Bildungsroman theme that Speziale explicitly states in the CD booklet?

ConsiderPhlebas' general remarks on the lyrics were completely devastating, too. seriously, i don't use the phrase "utter destruction" casually, but CP fucking wrecked Drew's lyrics:

Now, when I was young and full of beans and spunk, I was all for wildly overblown lyrics; still am today, on occasion. There is certainly a time and place for grandiose posturing and good old-fashioned pretension. Hey, let’s not forget: hyperbole, although now reduced to an insult hurled about by children, is a legitimate rhetorical device; one that’s played a vital role in the development of literature and art as a whole. Even taking this into consideration, though, there is a limit. And Circle Takes the Square fly over that limit with twinkles in their eyes and crystals dangling from their collective vagina. Up until very recently I’d only paid scant attention to the lyrics of As The Roots Undo, but when I finally gave them more than a glance I was both astounded and revolted at the emotionally-retarded gibber-jabber on display. With a constant romanticised lilt that would make Mills and Boon readers puke, each song unfolds in an orgy of thirteen-year-old-girl-writing-in-her-diary diction and a kind of pseudo-Old English that makes Shai Hulud’s version look like Shakespeare. Yes, in Drew’s fragile world a writer is a ‘scribe’ and a gate is a ‘portal’. Bless. Sadly, whereas Shai Hulud have the mustard to back up their pretension, all Circle Takes the Square have is a nasty case of thrush.

Album Rating: 1.5

collective vagina