SF Music Club - The Albums

Horrible! Worst album I've ever heard!

Excellent album, interesting first choice. Go get the whole thing and try to find time to listen to it all the way through. Individual songs are great (Silvia, Shiva, Two) but the album as a whole is very...wholesome.

My first impression is that this is a seriously gutwrenching, depressing album. Did this guy actually have a wife or some girlfriend or whatever close to him die of cancer? "Sylvia" was fantastic. I thought the melody for "Bear" was a little hackneyed, but then I realized what it was about. Now I find the contrast striking, and the change of pace at the chorus is really clever.

Sylvia is my favorite song on the album. I love the lyrics in the chorus: "Sylvia, get your head out of the oven go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you. Sylvia, get your head out of the covers let me take your temperature you can throw the thermometer right back at me if thats what you want to do okay?" As far as I know it's not completely autobiographical. I am pretty sure the narrative is fictional. I first heard this band live and was blown away by how great they were, enough so to listen to the album. That's not common for me. Also, I don't usually do concept albums, but I like this pretty well.

I think I will probably be in the minority here, but I didn't really like this. What a downer of an album. I dunno, maybe I just expect some sort of hope or backbone, or reckless disregard for authority in my music. When Patsy Cline sang about how heartbroken she was, and how bad her man treated her, you got the sense that she'd be back in the bar the next night with somebody else until she found the right guy. (just an example) This album sounds like a suicide note written by a boring person who's never experienced any real adversity in his life other than what prompted him to write this. I can appreciate the artistic talent, but this whole anti-catchy self loathing musical psychotherapy thing really just gets to me after a while. Your mileage may vary.

First Impression: A Belle & Sebastian cover band has unearthed Godspeed You! Black Emperor demos and synced them with a hypothetical soundtrack to Garden State 2: Still Misunderstood Highlights: Acoustic ambient jingle on "Two"; melodic, Neo-Gregorian hum-along on "Wake" Lowlights: single word song titles; ironic tempo and mood changes to convey songwriter's bipolar disorder; the contrived "epic" sound of vast outer space on "Prologue"; traces of Chris Martin influence Appropriate backing track for: The scene of a mediocre community college student waiting in a dark parking lot to pick up his younger sister from night volleyball practice. His highlighted copy of Darma Blues lies in the backseat of his Toyota Corolla underneath an empty bag of Chili Cheese Fritos and a 3-ring binder on HTML scripting. Overall Rating:

-Stephen, I don't see any B&S here. I feel like this album borrowed more from E6's body of work than anything. Prologue - Not too sure about the placement of this as it goes on. I'm pro-efficiency and trimming the fat when it comes to music so this seems a little unnecessary, but this could change as the album goes on..Yah, I didn't really like the transition/juxtaposition. I'm assuming it was simply a mood setter. Kettering - Pretty tragic lyrics, I could see chopping the prologue in half and adding it onto this one and making it the opener. The post-lyrics segment of the song works well, but I almost would have liked to see it before the lyrics part, as I feel it would serve the lyrics better (of course, I am taking a lyrics-centric approach to this album). Sylvia - Similar depressing lyrics. I'm not sure if I appreciate them. They seem much more to serve as an emotional relief than...The horn is a nice touch. I think these songs could be arranged better. I think a lot of the emotion gets lost in the instrumentation. I understand the use of distortion and the emotion that it and the instrumentation are supposed to convey, however they do not seem to do it for me. Atrophy - Beautiful writing on this song, still disagree with the sound of this album. I really hate how this song is arranged. It seems the first three songs follow this formula of "majority of lyrics over light instrumentation -> distortion with drums + strumming -> heavy distortion -> end/lyrics over light instrumentation." I don't think it serves the emotional purpose of the songs all that well. Bear - Good song, loved how it ended. Thirteen - I would've liked to see it end at the 2:00 mark personally, but the lyrics do have value within the narrative of feeling trapped. Two - The "demon wrapped in sunshine" concept works well here, as the lyrics are the heaviest and, I think, the best on the record at this point so far, with the instrumentation remaining light and glowing. The song also has a great momentum, but I think it should've ended at the 5:05 mark, the appendage at the end was a little aggravating, as here's this great musical and emotional thought, but yet it has this ugly hump on it's back that has no reason to be there but that we have to look at for 30 seconds. Shiva - Pretty imagery, I think the light instrumentation serves the song well, it's similarity to Two's makes me wonder why the end of Two was there at all. The horns are back, they're kind of a nice touch, but there frequency is getting dulling their impact at this point. The distorted bells that come in around the 3:00 mark would have been nice to see spread across the song, with a heavier presence in the song. Wake - A doosie of a song, quite long. Not sure what I think of this one. Epilogue - I think this album would be better served with stripped down acoustic instrumentation and subtler distortion/fuzz. 7/10. It's a flawed album, but I feel it serves its purpose quite well: delivering and conveying the emotional disaster that was his experience. The lyrics have good imagery and are subtle enough to be intelligent and creatively introspective, but on the other hand, I don't think the instrumentation serves him all that well. The ideas and sonics were largely there, just not arranged in such a way that would best complement what he's trying to say.

My first impression: ZZZzzzz...

After reading up on the album and the concept, I guess I can appreciate the complexity. The Jeff Buckley-esque vocals definitely caught me by suprise, but they seemed more like an imitation than an homage. The album wasn't terrible, and I didn't hate it. I tend to gloss over the lyrics of a song and tend to zone in on the overall energy and vibe of the band. Since the vibe was incredibly somber and serious, I just couldn't get into the album. I'll give it a few more listens and read over the lyrics, it'll probably change my opinion.

I don't even hear lyrics. Messages are for books. I hate music being given critical merit on account of great lyrics. I couldn't care less what people are singing about.

Some albums can stand on melody and arrangement alone, this album is not one of them IMO.

I'm surprised that this album is getting such negative reception here. I guess this album isn't really for you if you don't ever enjoy feeling sorry for yourself. Still, it is very solid musically for a recent rock album, considering that it is both experimental/conceptual and listenable. This album ranked consistently very highly in top of 2009 lists in many respected music publications. What do you people like for contemporary rock music, if not this? What does that even mean? The chord progressions aren't overly challenging, and neither are the melodic leads, and the songs aren't really that long. There's a large variety in dynamic and sonic textures. I really don't get this sentiment.

I tend not to like contemporary rock music.

It means that if this was an instrumental album, it wouldn't have gotten any acclaim. There's nothing that really separates this album's MUSIC from a whole host of other generic "contemporary" (as you put it) stuff right now. I would also hesitate to call this "rock music" but maybe that's just me. I tend to "not give a shit" about music publications. If I don't like it, a positive review isn't going to change my mind. I do like "quotes" though.