Review Summary: The Pillows fall back on their classic sound to produce an album that's more consistent (but less interesting) than their last two.
2004 was an important milestone in The Pillows’ history: it marked their 15th anniversary, and expectations were understandably high for the band to deliver something worthy of the event. Turn Back was a step in the right direction, after two releases that were considerably weaker than their prior albums. Would Good Dreams be a return to form, or another step in the band’s disappointing decline? Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t as black-and-white as it seems.
Xavier and Walking On The Spiral don’t stray far from other post-2000 Pillows songs, but they sound more natural and are much easier to enjoy than similar songs on Penalty Life and Thank You My Twilight; the production and mixing on Good Dreams isn’t nearly as nice as Smile, but it’s a little better than the last two releases. They recall the punk energy of Runners High, but with a slight ethereal touch that strings the album together in a consistent manner lacking on the last two albums. It's certainly a better start to the album than Penalty Life managed.
Good Dreams mercifully eschews the unsuccessful forays into rockabilly-surf that dragged down Penalty Life, and shows the band attempting to get back to the sound that made Happy Bivouac and Smile into such good albums. In some ways, they succeed: That Future Is Now is a great single, evocative of Last Dinosaur’s skyscraper hooks and supersonic melodies, but where Last Dinosaur was desperate and urgent, That Future Is Now is rather playful and loose, as we've come to expect from most Pillows releases after 2001. It certainly doesn't hurt that the song has an excellent music video, and highlights each of the band members doing what they do best: particularly Manabe, whose Johnny-Marr-On-Steroids brand of melodic leads and solos sounds much more compelling than on Penalty Life. Even his guitar tone sounds better than on the last two albums. (This is the last album where he plays his tinny-sounding Fender Mustang, after relying on the guitar exclusively for about five years.)
You Stood Like An Angel isn’t a brilliant song (in fact, it’s just another song in the vein of Smile’s Kono Yono Hate Made, though not nearly as good) but it’s pleasant enough that you don’t feel the twitching urge to skip it out of irritation. If The Pillows are going to rip themselves off, at least they have the courtesy to do it in a pleasant manner on Good Dreams. Orange Film Garden suffers from some bad guitar riffs, but it’s got a good chorus that elevates it to halfway-decent status. Frontiers is the best song since That Future Is Now, with memorable guitars and enjoyable pacing in line with the better moments from Runners High. And New Year’s Eve is a similarly-solid song. Even though The Pillows have made these kinds of songs before, who can blame them for revisiting the same ideas when they still work well on the second or third time around? And particularly, when they work so much better than the misguided attempts at something different on the last two albums?
Bad Dreams is the only truly bad song on the album, a grating instrumental track that fails at psychobilly. Fortunately, the title track is solid and shows The Pillows doing what they do best: writing emotional, grandiose rock statements that aspire to be blared from gigantic arenas, even if they don’t necessarily reach their goal. It has a powerful chorus and emotional guitar solo, and there’s nothing to dislike as long as you accept that Good Dreams isn’t a bad album just because it’s not doing anything new.
But it’s the album closer Rosy Head that reminds us of why the latter-day Pillows can be so frustrating: the song gets off to a nice start with a driving verse, but its pre-chorus and chorus sound cloying and stupid. It would be easy to dismiss this as yet another lame-ass Pillows album closer, determined to throw out the good will the band has built up in the latter half of the album. But then Manabe unleashes a glorious, outstanding guitar solo; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to rank it in his top ten solos in The Pillows’ entire discography. It’s disappointing that such an awesome guitar solo winds up in an otherwise mediocre song, but that’s what the post-2001 Pillows have become: frustrating in their tendency to flare the occasional brilliant moment in otherwise forgettable material.
Good Dreams is difficult to evaluate in part because it was the first release by the band after I became a fan, and had absorbed much of the best music released during their golden age. That Future Is Now is a great single that I loved right from the start, but I rarely listened to the rest of album much afterwards, particularly after My Foot and its singles eclipsed this album. But upon revisiting it ten years later, Good Dreams is surprisingly decent, and actually holds up better than I remembered. It’s certainly not as good as the 1997-2001 releases, but it’s a much more consistent album than Thank You My Twilight or Penalty Life. And it’s not a bad place to start, either – Good Dreams condenses much of what’s good about The Pillows into a concise, accessible package that probably won’t fully satisfy long-time fans, but might be capable of winning some new followers.
