3.5- generally not wild about SOTLshit getting more obvious and symphonic given how distinct and potent their touch with analog texture is but this fine yeah
3.5- Like this one a lot (Especially "Total Perspective Vortex", whew baby) but really don't revisit it that much. Eh, it's a performance art score thing?
3.5+ SOTL have always been slow but Avec makes a record like The Dead Texan look like the fuckin' sex pistols, "I Will Surround You" and "The Atomium" are both downright glacial. The payoffs? big worth (I always consider bumping this to a 4 somewhere around the end of Atomium or the beginning of Dust Breeding), but the trek is long and the climate not always forgiving. chillier than usual too, brrr
4- Jankiest tracklist in an early career rife with jank sequencing: all the best shit is packed into the relatively short bookends but ohhhhhhh those bookends! ESPECIALLY "Be Little With Me", predicting all their most rewarding excursions into dense psychedelic abstraction ("Taphead", "Austin Texas Mental Hospital", "Even If You're Never Awake"). I adore their debut but this is the first time they sounded like a real force to be reckoned with.
4.5- ambient "breakup album", might be proof McBride was always the shock collar on Wilzie's big guitary feelings. An album of heartbreaking restraint.
