Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off
That's an atrociously unfair assessment of the album
I mean the first part about his singing is fair, his voice is divisive.
Youre making it sound like they didn't have a vision for this and they sort of cobbled things together, when it just doesn't sound like that at all. I don't doubt that you dislike it, but it sounds like you're trying to find fault with it by calling them out on non-existent things.
Their ideas are all very thoroughly fleshed out, and their lyrics are brash and down to earth but still extremely eloquent. The album flows well and its varied instrumentation means that it sounds sprawling and lush but the style of the music they play coupled with the subject matter and musical influences they wear on their sleeves make it sound at the same time tight and cohesive.
I don't really understand your point about gang vocals either. I mean yeah they use them. I find that effective. The album sounds like something that'd be sung in a bar by pissed off drunkards, and that's exactly what the gang vocals highlight. This is an album that is meant to be yelled out.
Also stickles' strengths as a vocalist don't lie with his technical ability (which is virtually nil,) but with his phrasing and cadence. The amount of misery or anger or enthusiasm or frustration or elation or whatever emotion he can pack into his words astounds me.
yeah
I understand qualms with production quality and length too, but its almost like youre criticising it for being what it was trying to be.
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It's so refreshing to see I'm not the only one that didn't particularly like this.
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davey i don't think my feelings are nearly as harsh as yours but i think we have the same kind of beef about the album. i've been listening to the debut more lately and i'd probably give it a 3.5 though
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Album Rating: 2.5
Sputnik is not used to proper discussion like this. It's odd. Hehe.
"... it sounds like you're trying to find fault with it by calling them out on non-existent things. "
That's why I said I was playing devil's advocate, so you're partially correct. Doesn't mean that I think they are "non-existent" though. My main point was that the album is too long & a chore to get through (partially because of that & partially because of the other things I mentioned). What were the 3 words I used on the last page? Ambitious, overblown & something else. They went too far, basically.
On the gang vocals, I was again playing devils advocate. People criticise a pop-punk band (say, I dunno, Veara) for using them as a cliched & repetitive device. Playing devils advocate, I can do the same to TA. Why are they immune? You can definitely make the bar-room case & I'd actually buy it. But if I wanted to hear drunks gang chanting in a bar, I'd go to my local... Or go to an English Premier League game, since they have more harmonies & are funnier. LOL.
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Bagpipes sound cool. How about some horns?
Yeah, this is generally how people write songs.
And why is it that whenever people don't like an album, they just assume things like gang vocals are used out of deceit and cover up something bad than to embellish something good?
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Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off
I am really, really, really not somebody who ever says anything to this effect, but Davey, you really don't understand this album.
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Album Rating: 2.5
"And why is it that whenever people don't like an album, they just assume things like gang vocals are used out of deceit and cover up something bad than to embellish something good?"
Exactly my point in a way... Titus is pop-punk.
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Well that wasn't what you originally said. You made it seem like the gang vocals were only used to cover up Stickles' less than virtuoso vocals.
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imo, this album is just too messy for its own good, and whatever value I could get out of it with repeated listens just isn't worth the effort at this point in time.
5/5
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it's no emery that's for sure
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Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off
It is messy. It's an essential distillation of fucked up people. It's not an organised work of art with pre-conceived structure and form and bounds; it's impulsive, visceral, completely derailed. Everything contributes to that. If Stickles were an operatic vocalist or even a competent one this album would probably be excellent at best. If his lyrics weren't so all-over-the-place they wouldn't be so obviously and inherently human. If this album were shorter it would mean that it didn't say all that it could and all that it wanted to, and it would dull the effect of that last climax in Hampton Roads. It's not 10 songs stuck on a CD to sell a product, it's so obviously the product of flawed and probably drunk people making a reckless and unadulterated statement on what it's like to be flawed and probably drunk.
The end.
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Album Rating: 5.0
This isn't streamlined and slickly produced. FUCK THIS boo Titus Andronicus woo Ke$ha!
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Knott- sound off that shit
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It is messy. It's an essential distillation of fucked up people. It's not an organised work of art with pre-conceived structure and form and bounds; it's impulsive, visceral, completely derailed. Everything contributes to that. If Stickles were an operatic vocalist or even a competent one this album would probably be excellent at best. If his lyrics weren't so all-over-the-place they wouldn't be so obviously and inherently human. If this album were shorter it would mean that it didn't say all that it could and all that it wanted to, and it would dull the effect of that last climax in Hampton Roads. It's not 10 songs stuck on a CD to sell a product, it's so obviously the product of flawed and probably drunk people making a reckless and unadulterated statement on what it's like to be flawed and probably drunk.
And I don't like that. Case solved.
it's no emery that's for sure
Dude, man, broseph, homie G, get on that new song they posted asap.
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Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off
And I don't like that. Case solved.
That's cool, man, and it doesn't mean you can't have your opinion. If anything's been proven by sputnik's reaction to this it's that there is in most cases a moment where it clicks and people are like, "holy shit this is about me right now." I can totally appreciate why people who aren't like this or haven't reached that conclusion yet would not think it's close to a 5. But that's exactly what the people who didn't get it were like before they got it. I think this is my favourite album. Like, favourite. So do a load of other people. But it's cool and totally understandable that quite a lot of people don't, but to try and rationalise it by suggesting it's in any way contrived or doesn't fit your expectations of music in general is mad, and also, you might call this pop-punk, and I know that genres are stupid, but this is light years away, be that horizontally or vertically, from that genre, and I don't believe that Titus Andronicus have ever listened to any All Time Low.
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i'm so little compared to everyone here i fully expect this to click when i get old and start drinking all the time like you ruffians
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Album Rating: 5.0
my music taste is so eclectic i don't think i could ever annoint an album as my favourite. i mean yeah people commonly associate me with TDAG but some days i'm all about folk then other days im all about pop-punk. i'm like the sputnik contributor equivalent of your bi-polar uncle.
i dunno strikey this is great but im surprised to hear you say that
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Album Rating: 2.5
Ok, for those that either can't read OR more likely got lost in their emotions, I did write the following words:
"Playing devil's advocate"
You see how it got some real good discussion going!?!?
Next time, I'll be soft (like Mimsy), not rate it & not try to "apparently" rationalise it.
I should have known Sputnik isn't used to this good discussion thingy, but god damn it, I'm here to revolutionise the way Sputnik works.. .Until I get too frustrated & give up. LOL.
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This is on my top 10 of all time, maybe top 5.
...I guess if you were straight-edge it wouldn't have the same HOLY SHIT!!!! effect.
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Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off
Haha, I read it and understood it, but I mostly only post on this thread in order to say "this is a 5" and felt like explaining it in a personal manner for a change. My review tried to maintain some degree of professionalism but here I can just glow about it and it's cool.
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