Album Rating: 2.5

review was good but album is prob better than a 2.5

I should listen to this more, but I've been too wrapped up in their other albums as of late.

i think this is just an album for the ultimate fan who knows him in and out over and over to the point where him just executing himself clinically pretty much is perfection

also, i'm a sucker for folk as chirpy and trippy as this - you wouldnt want merritt to be ironic through some bright eyes-esque folk now would you?

i was definitely disappointed when i first heard it, but i pushed myself and i got through. i know you didn't like it at first either but look what happened =P your review for this is one of your best too, makes me love the album even more.

I'd appreciate the thematic concept of this album had it been executed in some way that wasn't so irritatingly superficial, which is why I put a lot of emphasis on that in my review. My original rating for this was a 1.5, so my rating has also gone up after about, I don't know, 12 listens (I only listened to it that much after realizing how much of a grower 69 was); part of that rating being that we all know that Merritt's ironic and that he's got it but I really wanted an expansion of it rather than him pulling the same old crap from the perspective of a tired artist. In that spirit, not much of his music has changed; it's a far more refined Holiday under the guise of folk, which does produce a few good tracks like "You Must Be Out of Your Mind" and "We are Having a Hootenanny," but a lot of it, as I said, is an austere plateau; he doesn't fall, but that's only because he doesn't grow, so there's really no way he can be good or bad, eh?

I understand that, from a Robin Smith "I'm-a-fanboy-and-I-don't-give-a-fuck-5-5-5-5-5-5" perspective, the more Merritt's ideals stay the same and the more "indie"-esque he becomes the better he'll get. But I wanted an expansion of his sound other than here ith thome folkthy acousticth that were hinted at before on thixty nine love thongs, as he's constantly entered new territory, but his ideals have been the same the whole time. Surely there's more on his mind than cynic-behind-some-boring-folk, right?

Just my thoughts.

from a Robin Smith "I'm-a-fanboy-and-I-don't-give-a-fuck-5-5-5-5-5-5" perspective

that was a parody for his attitude towards mag fields. he's a fan boy. admit it.

but the thng you are grasping at being 'superficial' as far as im concerned is a theme he's trying to execute - idk why people would listen to "i don't know what to say" or "better things" and think they're insanely ambiguous and vague and bad because again he's giving us a perspective thats romantisized and silly and, yes, superficial. and essentialyl the music on these tracks reflects it, but it's still catchy - what, his synth stuff was just as subdued in this way; "i have the moon", "deep sea diving suit", any track from get lost, holiday, charm of the highway or 69 was still restrained, but blissfully catchy.

can i just say that if you cared and wanted merritt to 'change' you would have stopped listening eons ago. and if you didnt because of theme then still, you shouldnt be bothered here. it's like saying you've grown tired of him being 'on' the whole time with what his lyrics convey but you want something new? he's never released a record like this before, just as he'd never released a record like distortion before. but you were willing to sit through 3+ albums of pure synth (awesome as they were) without demanding change?

hope merritt writes a concept album about this discussion

I understand that, from a Robin Smith "I'm-a-fanboy-and-I-don't-give-a-fuck-5-5-5-5-5-5

His themes are diverse on records like The Charm of the Highway Strip (see: AggravatedYeti's review of it for a lengthier and more detailed elaboration), but the whole superficiality thing just isn't executed nearly as well as it could have been. It's not as though he wasn't be obvious enough with it; his portrayal of it wasn't strong enough for the lackluster music behind it. Without the lyrics you've got a 3; the lyrics themselves bring this down (can't believe I'm saying that) to a 2.6-ish.... I think that in this scene, Merritt's truth was something that shouldn't have been messed with, even if he was trying to prove what was and wasn't true. There were far more ironic, stronger ways to go about it while keeping the whole Merritt cynicism thing intact.

Another point I'd like to address is that the music is a light 3, probably a biased sort of thing, as I don't want to say Merritt's less than a 3 ever. But yeah, his austere glance at folk isn't as memorable or beautiful or etc. etc. to be more than an austere glance at folk, if you catch my drift.

the simple fact that you're giving this a rating for the music with lyrics and a separate rating for the music without lyrics convinces me that you can't appreciate this for what it is, and that you're trying to pick apart something from a perspective that is already biased against the album

have you read robin and my reviews for this? you probably have, but still, read them again.

also i dont understand how you think hootenanny is a good song. it's one of the worst.

the simple fact that you're giving this a rating for the music with lyrics and a separate rating for the music without lyrics convinces me that you can't appreciate this for what it is, and that you're trying to pick apart something from a perspective that is already biased against the album

have you read robin and my reviews for this? you probably have, but still, read them again.

also i dont understand how you think hootenanny is a good song. it's one of the worst.

The album is not an instrumental, so lyrics do matter. Without them, artists wouldn't be saying much of anything.

Why???

Have you read my review for this? you probably haven't because I explicitly state it's on par with everything that Realism is. It's got some reallly good tracks and one or two bad ones. But without these, the average portion of Realism if you will, is just average. So the track, in turn, is average.

I illustrated a point: the lyrics brought the album's potential down. When divested of all it's elements, taking it at face value, that's what it comes down to. But I didn't take it at face value. I've never been less sure in all my years of reviewing. I'm not trying to piss anyone off here. I just find the message to be far too simplistic and expected to do anything but poke holes in what others have defended.

Merritt just seems to allow irony and symbolism, two additives, to take over his songwriting entirely. The music sounds rushed, like a kid who wrote an essay during lunch period, and therefore I can't find a reason why the album doesn't warrant a 2.5.





Yes. I take it you're trying to tell me to examine your dissection of the album's theme, but I have on my own, and quite frankly, it's that the lyrics are not good. Granted it's ironic and symbolic and such, but those literary devices are meant to augment, not to stand alone. There are plenty of ways to illustrate a point, so though it's not that odd that Merritt would choose this way to do so, it still comes across as an insult. Perhaps it's because this isn't a surprise that it comes across as such an insult, perhaps it's because Merritt's music is already so predictable that this sort of eery and slightly expected superficiality is such a slap-in-the-face. He's in a slump, resorting to tired ideas (this whole "I'm ironic, eh? So let me do some metaphor for true and false" has been done before, and much better too [probably because it's not so fucking expected, eh?]), which some will say is ironic, as Merritt's set himself up for it. I don't particularly care if it's ironic: the message's portrayal already has too many holes to allow irony and symbolism to become other ones.





You missed my point entirely. What I was trying to say was that just because there's a theme, it isn't by default good, which is what I'm taking from this conversation. I'm saying there are more ways than boring superficiality to illustrate a point, especially when backed by such boring tracks as shown on Realism. Granted, it's a balance of truth and false, real and fake, irony and symbolism... but we get that. It's not hard to get, which goes against MY beliefs in allegory: it is art; the more meanings behind something, the better. He seems to be sticking with one and guising it's poor portrayal with boring songs. He's no longer biting, but barking, as I stated in the review.

"He's painting still lifes" not flowers.

oh daym

yo u guys are mad gay

sh. heatd diskussion goin on.

I illustrated a point: the lyrics brought the album's potential down. When divested of all it's elements, taking it at face value, that's what it comes down to. But I didn't take it at face value. I've never been less sure in all my years of reviewing. I'm not trying to piss anyone off here. I just find the message to be far too simplistic a

SPUTNIKS SAYS YOUR COMMENT IS TOO LONG

ted, it's a balance of truth and false, real and fake, irony and symbolism... but we get that. It's not hard to get, which goes against MY beliefs in allegory: it is art; the more meanings behind something, the better. He seems to be sticking with one and guising it's poor portrayal with boring songs. He's no longer biting, but barking, as I stated in the review.

"He's painting still lifes" not flowers.

and he was always doing a parody to begin with, so it's a parody of a parody, and therein lies the beauty.

*sniff* yo u smell that.....

its gay.....lamo

his 'style' on realism isn't that different from what he's been doing for the last ten years, so it doesn't really make sense for you to now do a backflip and start chastising him for doing what he's always been doing

i can't speak for him, but i think the intention behind the album was for it to sound exactly like what you are faulting him on, and if was trying for it to be like that, it's not logical for you to fault him on it. it's like all of a sudden 'oh merritt's done a bunch of bland acoustic songs and yeah they're ironic but what's new'. that's not a well thought out base for an argument. sure, you can have your opinion on it, but i think that you still aren't comprehending what the album's about.

It's not beautiful to do something that's been done before. Beauty is unique, thus rendering your argument, from my perspective, as invalid.