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I've concluded that these days, I prefer their live sound to the studio recordings. The good but ultimately underwhelming Mr. Noah EP has confirmed this for me. It's like they've forgotten about the yin in their music.
From listening to much of their back catalogue over the past week, I've been astounded at how little space there is in their recordings these days compared to everything up to and including Water Curses. Even alongside MPP, ETSH and Mr. Noah are simply fatiguing. Even something as dense and chaotic as Infant Dressing Table manages to retain a sense of space around the instruments. Since I've mentioned WC, I think that is basically the last time they got it right on record. The title track is incredibly dense, lots of rhythms and textures and one-off noises among a very busy melody which only gets busier as the reedy synth comes into the song. And yet, you can pick out every single element!
Compare this to something as compositionally straightforward as You Can Count On Me and it's just a bit sad how flat the dynamics are. Now, I do kind of see how that works on Tomboy, it's a pretty impressionistic and solemn affair all round, but what's the point in stripping the composition down to a few elements if you then overcompensate by slapping a shitload of FX on each of those elements?! It's like doing a pointilist painting and then spraying it with water. The album completely loses the direct emotional connection of the live performance. Something like the ATP 09 Surfer's Hymn is streets ahead of what it became, all trebly rhythmic 'texture' destroying the space between the vocal melody notes.
I feel that this is exactly what happened with Faces In The Crowd, as well. Live, allowed to breathe, it became my favourite of the songs and while it was great to hear the vocals in better quality on record, I quickly felt that something fundamental had been lost. Again, it comes down to breathing space. I should say, however, that the tracks Mr. Noah and Robert Frost are both significantly 'better' (i.e. to my taste) and give me plenty of hope for the album. I've just absolutely no idea why Noah decided that FITC needed the generic AC fluttering rhythmic noise underneath the beat. I think it's a bad decision, frankly.
I don't point the finger at Sonic Boom at all and I massively appreciate his input on here. Nor do I think Ben Allen is at fault for CHz. It's clearly a route the band has decided to take, and it seems to be so across their solo releases, too. A Sender briefly made me feel that the flame was rekindled but even there, after a few listens, the notion of stripped-down elements of guitar, drums and vocals was clearly absurd. The notion of hearing any element against a black or dark background is unfathomable for the most part, across the whole LP.
I really do wish I didn't feel this way and I've been trying hard to listen to these things for what they are, without preconception (as much as is possible) but the differences between their pre- and post-MPP output is just objectively remarkable. You can pick pretty much any recording and feel the difference. Even on Feels where you have a near-constant drone of guitar or cello on many tracks, the melodies and words and rhythms leap out at you.
Sorry to bring up a moany and very subjective topic at an exciting time but I'm just trying to get my head around this because I realised that this is the fifth or sixth record in a row which has disappointed me, and all for the same reason. I've loved the songs and found the recording problematic and claustrophobic, and I wonder if they'll ever move on from this approach.
