Album Rating: 2.5

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THIS IS HOW YOU GUYS ARE MAKING HIM FEEL.

also:

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

iiiii doooont know what to sayyyyyyy i doooont know what to saaaayyy

also this is a really, really dumb statement. nearly everything has been doen before in one way or another, and i'm pretty sure the statement 'beauty is unique' doesn't render anybody's argument as invalid

and if was trying for it to be like that, it's not logical for you to fault him on it.

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

And also, something very good can get old after more than a decade, js.

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING! That's why it's so absolutely ludicrous to call his parody of a parody "beautiful."

That makes no sense at all.

If he was trying to do something which I didn't agree with, and he did it, it doesn't mean that I'm going to praise him for something I don't agree with.

Let me rephrase style into approach.

And also, something very good can get old after more than a decade, js.

no that's not what you were saying. and no, it's not ludicrous at all, it's actually a very inventive and attractive approach to pop music (which is what the magnetic fields is all about)

it makes perfect sense, you just don't understand it. another example would be faulting funeral doom for being slow, when the whole point of that style of music is to be slow.

now that makes no sense at all, and is not actually what i was saying. at all. i have a feeling you aren't actually reading what i type.

doesn't make a difference

and it also might not. i'm assuming you like i and distortion, so in my opinion for you to think this is 'inferior' to both of those is a little silly

anywya, i think this argument is just going downhill from here - i'm sure we can both agree that this is not his best work (though robin would disagree with that)

An ammendum to the last statement: granted it's got the same components minus the folk, distortion, and acoustic childish-ness on all three of those records, but even Distortion proved to be a breaking point for Merritt idea-wise. If not for his 60s pop affinity there it would be like a 3 rather than a 3.5

Yeah it is. I think it can be summed up as this:

You like it for the irony and the double-parody schematics, right? Well, I think that his superficiality was not the way to approach such a provocative subject. I get that it's ironic, but Sigh's Imaginary Sonicscape was eclectic, but it didn't work in that context, right?

However Merritt will never be as bad as Sigh.

well he's never really had any other shtick other than writing sappy yet moving lyrics with simplistic yet catchy tunes. distortion had a bit of a 'different' style to it, but it was still inherently 'merritt', and i don't think anyone should ever expect anything more from him.

You just keep dragging me into arguments, don't you?

I mean I love Merritt's charm, but it was never so strong (I find some of his lyrics to be rushed as much as this album seems to be) that anything really warranted much more than a 4. To me a lot of his work seems to be the "if you don't like it you don't get it" band of pop, which is stupid, because he's proving to be a one-trick pony.

Plus expansion is my favorite thing. What will happen next? Continue changing and thou art bound to prosper.

EDIT: in my analysis of his discography, I'm realizing I'm going to point this out a lot.

oh he's definitely a one-trick pony, i'd be the last to deny that. but his trick is fantastic and in my opinion never gets old. he certainly does have the talent at writing amazing songs though, and even with realism you can easily see that he hasn't quite lost it. i don't think he ever will.

i'll probably stick with holiday and 69 after his next album if he doesn't change at least a little bit.

well, those are his two best so you wouldn't be doing wrong by him at all

the highway strip is just as good as sixty-nine

i'll just say this of the lyrics: merritt knows his audience. you act like the ambiguity and the superficiality of it brings the album down but lyrically there's something special about this record because of that ambiguity; it's like it's our record, me and rasputin thinking highly of it probably being a case in point for fanboyism granted, but that doesn't detract from the fact that anyone who's willing to take a look at the record beyond face-value can take away what merritt's trying to say from it, from a logical reading. it's like any merritt album in that respect, only it runs even deeper - so to say it's superficial is pretty much the opposite.

musically, every other merritt record had tracks that rocked the boat a little to a higher majority of tracks that were awesomely subdued - on holiday i'd pit the 2nd track to the 3rd and 4th that follow it, and on charm i'd pit "two characters in search of acountry song" to "i have the moon", "lonely highway", etc etc. here it's the same - "you must be out of your mind" is a gamechanger, but okay, "i dontk now what to say" and "better things" aren't - but it's also not the same. it's not simply a superficial 'glance' at folk, it's merritt playing his influences on his sleeves - it's a cosy homage to something else, just as distortion was a cosy homage to jesus and mary chain. i LOVE that he's still subdued on several tracks, and i love it more because in places its actually catchier than his attempts on previous records - "better things" and "seduced and abandoned" etc i actually find so much more enjoyable than distortions tracks or than get losts tracks or than (sorry rasp) holidays tracks. and i think at this point, us all adoring merritt, it's just about what genre you want him to play from, and he's not going to give us just 'one', so maybe thats that. you stick to your synth and i'll stick to my "autercrerere" or whatever folk. it's only 'at a glance' given that he's going back to synth with his next record.

this is definitely some sort of hippie-ish psch folk, but that doesn't make the lyrics superficial because he's lost his cynicism (firstly, his voice is always going to tap into that cynicism). if you want the 'change' youre talking about then you should want this chirper change, the cynicism disguised into almost easter-eggs for fans: do you think he actually wants us to get the low-down on his ho-down?

ultimately tho i agree with rasputin apart from the part where i disagree with him over this being a 3.5. and also, i agree - this isn't us attacking you, it's just like a really douchey eng lit class - this album is so awesome to analyse, i just don't get how anyone could dare call my lovely realism superficial =(

But that was the thing about Distortion! It was a record for fans to indulge in, but it was able to reach a larger audience. Holiday was the same (if you listen to it after a bunch of the records he's done that is). This, when taken on the most objective level I can muster, has absolutely nothing on the rest of merritt's discography, particularly when you see how absolutely boring and expected he's gotten. It may be "for the fans" but so was Taproot's latest.

Also austere means boring, but in this context it means formal. And I'm glad you recognized the "glance" was how I thought of this album, just a tidbit of what he could do, as though he half-assed it.

Robin, you got a friend in me, you got a friend in me. Remember what your old pal said, you got a friend in me. Yeah, you got a friend in me.

(Toy Story's on so it is indeed not irrelevant)

Also austere means boring, but in this context it means formal