Isn't music weird. Like those bum bums in Gem either register as fully neutral or at least just like not bad at ALL and yet here we are. Not saying people who don't like it are wrong, just pointing out um. the beauty of subjectivity.
i mean i think they're kinda bad, but i still like the song
I went back and watched a live performance of Gem from March of 2022 and to my surprise, very softly, Deakin does the bum bums live. They're just barely audible.
the BEST thing of this era is the level of genius in the DRY way the drums an the bass play together, with the aparent simplicity of the beat (panda doing great tricks of dinamic) being collapsed with the ALWAYS WONDERER basslines of avey. his aproach to playing bass is as always like discovering the instrument and at the same time instantanialy giving his touch.
this groovy mix, with deakin going nuts on the keys and geo being geo (hes also a keyboardist now, so...)
and i fucking love ACAB, its on repeat on my mind all the time. its PURE anco, a bliss from their old nuclear old tv showszy sound
Absolutely. It can't be overstated how masterful the rhythm parts have been in this era. I listened to some Animal Collective as a teenager but it was songs like Car Keys and Prester John that turned me into a message-board lurking superfan
No matter what you think of the other songs, at least we can mostly all agree there are 30+ consecutive minutes on the album that are basically untouchable. Magicians and Defeat
Haha it is WAY more than that! I absolutely LOVE everything with the exception of Stride and Kings
(so far)
edit: also - Bum Bum gang for sure. Love it.
Last edited by dervish on Thu Sep 07, 2023 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
i've been iffy on avey's studio vocals this era but oh man the extent to which he kills it on magicians makes me so happy, he's so dynamic and searing during the main portion, that's the good shit
i've been iffy on avey's studio vocals this era but oh man the extent to which he kills it on magicians makes me so happy, he's so dynamic and searing during the main portion, that's the good shit
Yeah, this and Defeat have some of his best studio vocals in a long time.
Having listened to this album p much nonstop the past week, I would say:
1. Ark/Tongs/Feels/SJ/MPP
2. Spirit
3. IIN?
4. everything else in varying order
Could see it maybe overtaking Spirit for the number 2 spot eventually. If they had recorded everything with Elevado as originally planned and made the album without covid happening, I could imagine the top holy quintet becoming a sextet...
The bum bums kinda make the song for me. Would feel a little lifeless without that bit of ear candy
I'm 100% sure the bum bums are just there to give it that 60's barbershop/sunshine pop feel in a completely ironic way. It's a funny goofy song, the bum bums are a fucking joke I believe, and I fuck with that.
i want to balance out that criticism to say that instrumentally speaking, they absolutely fucking nailed the churning, ominous storm-at-sea vibe of the first two sections of genie's. i feel like i understand something deeper about the song that i never quite got from the live versions
glenbeige wrote:
at first it felt sluggish to me but now the word that comes to mind is “hypnotic.” Those first two sections are churning and churning and then the bottom falls out and that third section just kind of floats on through with this mantra.
Sounds incredibly cliché, but I think the song is more of a journey now. It genuinely feels like we spend the first two parts on the stormy seas and then in the third section the clouds part and we have arrived. There is a profound sense of resolution and 'arrival' that I find very satisfying.
It's like the ending from Today's Supernatural, it's goofy, like they're making fun of being a "live" band. Humor is a big part of the psychedelic experience for all I know (have not been experienced yet), and they gave said that. They think big shifts in humor are a big part of that, and have made decisions in pacin driven by this.
The bum bums kinda make the song for me. Would feel a little lifeless without that bit of ear candy
I'm 100% sure the bum bums are just there to give it that 60's barbershop/sunshine pop feel in a completely ironic way. It's a funny goofy song, the bum bums are a fucking joke I believe, and I fuck with that.
Agree. I think we sometimes forget the band's sense of humour when we're so deeply affected by emotional heavyweights like Defeat and Magicians. I see Clubs as also having that funny/playful side. On this album it provides some balance and levity. It's a good thing.
Sounds incredibly cliché, but I think the song is more of a journey now. It genuinely feels like we spend the first two parts on the stormy seas and then in the third section the clouds part and we have arrived. There is a profound sense of resolution and 'arrival' that I find very satisfying.
This is very true. I love all the bells and chimes and sounds that give it that nautical theme. One of my favourites now. They just nailed everything, cannot get tired.
Agree. I think we sometimes forget the band's sense of humour when we're so deeply affected by emotional heavyweights like Defeat and Magicians. I see Clubs as also having that funny/playful side. On this album it provides some balance and levity. It's a good thing.
That sequence really brings SJ back to the table. It has the same energy as FRG > Fireworks> #1, two affecting epic proportions songs that are followed up by a ween song.
The bum bums kinda make the song for me. Would feel a little lifeless without that bit of ear candy
I'm 100% sure the bum bums are just there to give it that 60's barbershop/sunshine pop feel in a completely ironic way. It's a funny goofy song, the bum bums are a fucking joke I believe, and I fuck with that.
Agree. I think we sometimes forget the band's sense of humour when we're so deeply affected by emotional heavyweights like Defeat and Magicians. I see Clubs as also having that funny/playful side. On this album it provides some balance and levity. It's a good thing.
This album is literally perfect every song is a ten. I understood some of the criticisms on first. second, and third listen but now by listen 20 I’ve fallen in love with all the choices they made on this album. The simplicity is so sweet and I think makes songs like Genies and Gem and I more psychedelic and entrancing it almost feels like a personal performance. You just get lost in the sauce and the littte harmonics laced around the songs are literally scrumptious like cake. The performance is perfect and the vocals might be the best of any record I’ve heard in a long time. So unique and so powerful. Defeat is like an onion laying out its somber story. And magicians is the climax of a career in my opinion best fucking song. This album will be my favorite for a long long long time. I can already imagine the great trips and future experiences this album will enchant and hope one day to show to my future family. I’ve been here since before skiffs just waiting to hear these songs and the wait paid off so well. These boys have outdone themselves from soul to kings. Banger after banger. Easy 10/10. I accept no criticism to this album it’s the best of this decade for sure and maybe the century. For me i will die with this album.
Any suggestions for tattoos of this album. From the cover? Lyrics? Etc
Not sure if this was already discussed and maybe it's a hot take, but I think my main strife with the album is the track order... Genie doesn't feel like a good second song choice and Defeat being in the middle is a little weird, specifically with Gem & I coming right after it. It's a pretty abrupt vibe change. Not sure how else I'd order it... maybe Defeat should have been the closer right after King's Walk?
Also not entirely stoked on Clubs. It's kinda cool but feels a bit out of place compared to the rest of the material on the album. Very interesting chord progressions in the song though.
King's Walk might be my favorite track, aside from Defeat.
soul capturer with intro is a really effective opener. it's friendly and inviting. magicians or kings or genies were more obvious opener choices in some ways, but it feels good to be welcomed in with a bop before starting to slow down.
genies fucks, its pretty faithful and whoever mentioned spyro was on point. the mixing is a little different than i expected but it doesn't hurt it imo. the vocals sound nice up front.
broke zodiac just sounds exactly like the live version to me. not one of my favorite songs.
magicians really leans into its soaring rock-operaness. the piano and the guitar squeals pull it hard in that direction. it owns the silly theatricality and it works.
so far this album flows pretty well, it's patient but rewarding. going into a 20 minute glacial epic at this point in the album feels so strange in practice. i don't think there's a proper solution to this tracklisting conundrum that doesn't involve making this song less slow, or at least more dynamic on a moment-to-moment level. it's jarring to have a song jam the brakes so hard right in the middle of the album. but it's pretty good in and of itself. and i do admire the audacity of this placement.
insane transition to gem. i heard the bum bums in the live version but it's weird hearing it so up front. this album accents with beatles vocal filters the same way skiffs used autotune. my weird personal block with panda's songs on this album is that spyro feels like the closest reference point for all of them, or at least that general era in video game music. the simple, jaunty melodies and beats and lush keys. that vibe is an odd fit on this album.
stride is a little bit of a bore for me. never been a huge fan.
acab is hilarious. not sure what else to say. is this a distant descendant of tri kid?
kings is ac self parody.
i would say this album is a pretty engaging one overall, but definitely full of confounding swerves. i think it does invite the white album comparison. the whiplash is part of the presentation. there's a lot of levity and playful touches, alongside theatrically dark, brooding and ominous patches of music. and a lot of the most thrilling, satisfying moments are so over-the-top they almost feel tongue in cheek, i.e. the blissed out harmonies in the genies last section, the crescendo of magicians, i would even count the blunt transition from defeat into gem. songs like defeat and stride right threaten to sound emotionally overwrought. but with the way it deliberately creates these jarring tonal shifts, and the tactile, relatively restrained production, i think it's trying not to take itself too seriously. the mission is to showcase this weird variety pack of songs and keep you engaged throughout. this album has to bear the unfortunate baggage of being the leftovers that didn't work on time skiffs, and it would be difficult to ignore that factor no matter what. they just steered into it. it's like watching one random scene from a different shakespeare play after another.
right now i have no idea if i like it. it always takes a few listens to settle into how i feel about one of their albums, but this is a particularly perplexing one.
Admittedly there’s a lot of novelty factor involved, but ACAB is one of my favorites from the bunch. I’d be pretty happy with a little EP of 3-4 longer takes following the same style/energy
Sequencing is pretty great imo, maybe ACAB after Defeat would be funnier but as a pro Bum-Bum fella I think Gems works pretty well as a sudden tone shift too. Album feels about as well put together as it could be assuming all these tracks have to be on it.
This album is literally perfect every song is a ten. I understood some of the criticisms on first. second, and third listen but now by listen 20 I’ve fallen in love with all the choices they made on this album. The simplicity is so sweet and I think makes songs like Genies and Gem and I more psychedelic and entrancing it almost feels like a personal performance. You just get lost in the sauce and the littte harmonics laced around the songs are literally scrumptious like cake. The performance is perfect and the vocals might be the best of any record I’ve heard in a long time. So unique and so powerful. Defeat is like an onion laying out its somber story. And magicians is the climax of a career in my opinion best fucking song. This album will be my favorite for a long long long time. I can already imagine the great trips and future experiences this album will enchant and hope one day to show to my future family. I’ve been here since before skiffs just waiting to hear these songs and the wait paid off so well. These boys have outdone themselves from soul to kings. Banger after banger. Easy 10/10. I accept no criticism to this album it’s the best of this decade for sure and maybe the century. For me i will die with this album.
Any suggestions for tattoos of this album. From the cover? Lyrics? Etc
Love you guys
Ha! This one gets it. I feel the same way. Absolutely adore it. Might not go as far as album of the century though
As far as tattoos go, that’s a very personal thing. What connects with you?
This album is literally perfect every song is a ten. I understood some of the criticisms on first. second, and third listen but now by listen 20 I’ve fallen in love with all the choices they made on this album. The simplicity is so sweet and I think makes songs like Genies and Gem and I more psychedelic and entrancing it almost feels like a personal performance. You just get lost in the sauce and the littte harmonics laced around the songs are literally scrumptious like cake. The performance is perfect and the vocals might be the best of any record I’ve heard in a long time. So unique and so powerful. Defeat is like an onion laying out its somber story. And magicians is the climax of a career in my opinion best fucking song. This album will be my favorite for a long long long time. I can already imagine the great trips and future experiences this album will enchant and hope one day to show to my future family. I’ve been here since before skiffs just waiting to hear these songs and the wait paid off so well. These boys have outdone themselves from soul to kings. Banger after banger. Easy 10/10. I accept no criticism to this album it’s the best of this decade for sure and maybe the century. For me i will die with this album.
Any suggestions for tattoos of this album. From the cover? Lyrics? Etc
Love you guys
Ha! This one gets it. I feel the same way. Absolutely adore it. Might not go as far as album of the century though
As far as tattoos go, that’s a very personal thing. What connects with you?
I got one in June of the original spirit album cover. I just want something to represent how much I love the music.
might be a hot take but I think that skiffs material would be better with the now? treatment. especially walker and car keys. I feel like I want a car keys the way genies open is and walker the way broke zodiac is. production wise and with the choice to strip it back a little. and with the long car keys intro.
Sequencing is pretty great imo, maybe ACAB after Defeat would be funnier but as a pro Bum-Bum fella I think Gems works pretty well as a sudden tone shift too. Album feels about as well put together as it could be assuming all these tracks have to be on it.
This is what I'm doing most of the time when I'm listening through the whole album. ACAB after defeat and everything settles nicely.
Jack23 wrote:
might be a hot take but I think that skiffs material would be better with the now? treatment. especially walker and car keys. I feel like I want a car keys the way genies open is and walker the way broke zodiac is. production wise and with the choice to strip it back a little. and with the long car keys intro.
I completely agree with what you say regarding car keys, but walker turned out perfect on skiffs, I think. I'd rather hear prester john with IIN production. And I think stride rite would have benefited from TS production. But all in all, I'm really glad how both albums turned out. Also, every song made the cut, which is great!
Agree. I think we sometimes forget the band's sense of humour when we're so deeply affected by emotional heavyweights like Defeat and Magicians. I see Clubs as also having that funny/playful side. On this album it provides some balance and levity. It's a good thing.
That sequence really brings SJ back to the table. It has the same energy as FRG > Fireworks> #1, two affecting epic proportions songs that are followed up by a ween song.
i think i might just experience strawberry jam differently from most people idk, #1 has never felt like some deflating thing to me, it's not Epic but still it feels like a pretty straight faced coming of age song
i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that ACAB's inclusion on iin makes for a totally different flavor of levity than we've maybe ever seen from ac. the general air of twee goofiness that's always been there (to varying degrees) is very different from outright jokey songs that instantly diffuse all gravitas within blast radius. maybe college counts as that..? college is a better joke in any case
piggy, acab, man they are really trying to tell us something huh
good point with piggy tho and it being heavily context dependent. i do think the majority of the jokiness of acab comes from how it plays in the context of iin rather than from within the song itself (though it is of course fairly silly taken on its own)
i want to being thinking about this song less lmao it is literally 3% of the album's total runtime but it is just so There yknow
I think of it as more ‘playful’ than ‘funny’. It’s just this goofy, infectious little penultimate jam that says ‘hey wasn’t that a fun ride?’ right before the end.
Maybe I missed the discussion but I’m surprised there hasn’t been much conversation around the intro studio chatter on Soul Capturer. Talk about cheeky humor! “Is thirty seconds long enough?” plays with us fans’ expectations for an adequate intro (since Dragon Slayer tended to leave many wanting) and sets us up for these epic 7- to 20-minute songs. No, thirty seconds isn’t long enough! Also, the talk of how it should sound makes this record self-referential and maybe they’re most ironic yet, Painting With notwithstanding.
Maybe I missed the discussion but I’m surprised there hasn’t been much conversation around the intro studio chatter on Soul Capturer. Talk about cheeky humor! “Is thirty seconds long enough?” plays with us fans’ expectations for an adequate intro (since Dragon Slayer tended to leave many wanting) and sets us up for these epic 7- to 20-minute songs. No, thirty seconds isn’t long enough! Also, the talk of how it should sound makes this record self-referential and maybe they’re most ironic yet, Painting With notwithstanding.
Maybe I'm insane, but isn't there a bit of the Hey Bog intro mixed in there? It's super faint but I can't unhear it...
Noah: ...he climbs out of the woods...
Unknown: the corner... tell you... (unintelligible) ...the 6th day, in the background
Unknown: ...the fall forest...
Dave: let's see what you've got bro
Josh (maybe): is this the one with the lead vocalist?
Noah: that... that means 30 seconds, alright
Josh (maybe): like you're.. i like you, talking about... functional...
Unknown: yeh, just like, just record things naturally
Dave: sylla-bul-bul-bles
Dave (maybe): hay bales
Unknown: if you imagine you're, like
Dave: join us, and have a wonderful day
Noah: I mean, 30 seconds is pretty good right?
This album is literally perfect every song is a ten. I understood some of the criticisms on first. second, and third listen but now by listen 20 I’ve fallen in love with all the choices they made on this album. The simplicity is so sweet and I think makes songs like Genies and Gem and I more psychedelic and entrancing it almost feels like a personal performance. You just get lost in the sauce and the littte harmonics laced around the songs are literally scrumptious like cake. The performance is perfect and the vocals might be the best of any record I’ve heard in a long time. So unique and so powerful. Defeat is like an onion laying out its somber story. And magicians is the climax of a career in my opinion best fucking song. This album will be my favorite for a long long long time. I can already imagine the great trips and future experiences this album will enchant and hope one day to show to my future family. I’ve been here since before skiffs just waiting to hear these songs and the wait paid off so well. These boys have outdone themselves from soul to kings. Banger after banger. Easy 10/10. I accept no criticism to this album it’s the best of this decade for sure and maybe the century. For me i will die with this album.
Any suggestions for tattoos of this album. From the cover? Lyrics? Etc
Love you guys
Ha! This one gets it. I feel the same way. Absolutely adore it. Might not go as far as album of the century though
As far as tattoos go, that’s a very personal thing. What connects with you?
I got one in June of the original spirit album cover. I just want something to represent how much I love the music.
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