[Miss Amanda Jones]

Stigmata89 wrote:

Slashman wrote:

I hope AC is done with Ben

If anything, Ben is done with ac. They're not worthy of his genius production, and quite frankly, he knows it. He'll move on to make more modern marvels like the new youth lagoon album, while ac is left in the dust.

Youth Lagoon is a comically generic "chillwave" act. Lots of reverbed "soundscapes," whispered vocals, synths... of course he also brings in the Americana influences cuz that's been cool since Kurt Vile

[Vovenarg]

...have you even listened to Wondrous Bughouse? has basically no relation to chillwave

[Miss Amanda Jones]

Vovenarg wrote:

...have you even listened to Wondrous Bughouse? has basically no relation to chillwave

i sort of use chillwave as a catch-all term to describe a lot of't post-MPP indie rock... lots of reverb, electronics, "sonic exploration," etc.

Also, he sings in that annoying whiney voice that I somehow keep hearing when listening to new artists.
My thesis statement is essentially Youth Lagoon is generic "indie" music which I tend to feel hostile towards.

[Vovenarg]

ok fair enough

[SlashingGoodTime]

Never 4get

[rampface]

I will never understand how and why they chose THAT to follow one of the most iconic covers of all time (MPP duh).

[P nu]

i liked the OG CHZ cover more than the new one

[Wilbur]

I think I do too. OG cover looks like it would be for a nu-metal album, it's so deeply un-fashionable that I thought AC was being confrontational.

[rampface]

I like the final cover better. Still disappointed when I saw it but it's grown on me.

[ballparkmanatee]

I remember somebody a while back pointed out that the scratched up looking colors on the inside of the mouth was a picture of an astronaut looking out at space or something, so I thought that was pretty cool. But yeah I like the final cover more.

[amadeofaingoldnew]

I think that MPP was so beautiful that they decided to have something more ugly or raw, and thats how Centipede Hz was born. If they had done an album as good as, if not better than MPP then we would pretty soon get bored of that sound, so in a way I think its good to have so-so albums every now and then. Now we know (or hope) that the next album will be the shits.

[dio]

o but chz > mpp

[amadeofaingoldnew]

Person Pitch > MPP + Chz

[dio]

not acceptable to think pp is better than mpp any time after like '10ish

[ballparkmanatee]

To this day I still have a hard time connecting emotionally with MPP, I don't know why. The songs are pretty but I just can't relate to most of them so its one of my least listened to AC albums. CHZ is less consistent but when it hits, it hits me hard. So I think I prefer it.
Person Pitch seemed mindblowing the first few times I listened to it, and I still think its a fantastic album, but my reception towards it has cooled down a bit.

[colin]

get stoned and turnit up bro

[ballparkmanatee]

I have plenty of times man, and songs like In The Flowers blow me on a regular basis. But still as a whole I think the album is beautiful just nothing that really hits me too deep.

[dio]

the emotions that might be called joy, euphoria or wistful-nes don't interest you? A dash of yearning, but ultimately peaceful and ephemeral feelings? u need to re-evaluate methinks

[Stigmata89]

Diomedes wrote:

the emotions that might be called joy, euphoria or wistful-nes don't interest you? A dash of yearning, but ultimately peaceful and ephemeral feelings? u need to re-evaluate methinks

So deep, so profound :,(.

[ballparkmanatee]

I think its more the themes of family that don't connect too well to me, I mean I'm not estranged from my family or anything but I don't get overwhelming joy when I think about it. But maybe that is something I do need to reevaluate. Also the watery summer lagoon atmosphere isn't something I'm too interested in personally. Overall if I want to listen to an AC album and feel joy, euphoria, and wistfulness I'll go for Feels instead.
Like I said I like the album a lot I just connect with the themes of CHZ more.

[El Camino]

I think that about half of their discography is better than MPP anyway, with Person Pitch falling way ahead of it

[lucasmoreira]

My problems with chz are more the messy concept that the band came up with: alien band + radio frequency + live human sound, i think songs like NTB had nothing to do with that..

[rampface]

The record sounds alien to me. From start to finish. In my head, I imagine AC is the Cantina lounge band for the night and those of us on Earth are listening to the space transmission on our radios.

[lucasmoreira]

Yeah it sounds, but some of the songs are not about that, Its not like down there, where the concept and the overall sound connects with the feelings and words that dave was trying to say..

[dio]

I think the songs/lyrics sound feasibly like fitting with the concept that has aliens trying to make their version of earth jams, and like Applesauce is them overestimating the importance of fruit in our culture. but seriously I think that fits, but I don't think the concept is really that important. They use that I think to know what they're going for but ultimately its just the sound and song unto itself and the album, and that creates its own more true concept that isn't dependent on 2ndary sources

[lucasmoreira]

You think that NTB, pulleys and wide eyed sound alien?

Dont get me wrong, this is one of my favorite records but i do think the band had a problem with the direction here

[dio]

I don't see how those sound less alien than the other tracks. And the sounds sound alien but I picture the lyrics are supposed to be like an alien trying to approximate what an earth pop song lyric would be, and that could be anything basically

[lucasmoreira]

Fair enough, i just dont know why those aliens are making monkeys to get rich

[dio]

that's an alien trying to do his take on our way of writing veiled allegories as cultural commentary but he doesn't really understand the english idiom well but ends up with some cool stuff anyway

[lucasmoreira]

Sometimes i regret that applesauce freebird that i posted here, specially when im in front of the ac members

[Cussing Bum]

Do yu guys mean Ben Alien?

[Curved Hair]

jerry wonder wrote:

Stigmata89 wrote:

Vovenarg wrote:

oh man that's crazy clams, those are definitely two of my favorite from CHz. people are always like "CHz is their weakest" but people never agree on which songs are weak. it's the most divided as far as what people like of any record of theirs it seems like. its pretty interesting

That's weird, since I always thought it was unanimous that Father Time was one of the worst songs on the album. The instrumentation reminds me too much of Delfino Plaza from Super Mario Sunshine, and not in a happy, nostalgic way either. Just overall, not one of Avey's finest moments.

I think we can all agree that Honeycomb deserved a place on centipede hz, though.

AND Gotham

but lets head on over to CHz discussion i guess.

I actually disagree here. Gotham is one of my favorite AC songs, but honeycomb/gotham have an entirely different vibe than the rest of cHz. I definitely don't get a far away transmission alien band vibe from them, and absolutely agree with their decision to release them separately

[Stigmata89]

Yeah, but about half the album missed the mark with the whole alien vibe they were trying to go for. Pulleys, Amanita, Applesauce, Father Time, don't strike me at all as sounding "alien", at least not any more alien sounding then the b-sides. Replacing a few songs here and there with Crimson and Gotham wouldn't have made that much of a difference. If anything, it might have given the album the much needed respite that it needed, if they decided to put in Crimson and Gotham.

[snowtire]

Curved Hair wrote:

I definitely don't get a far away transmission alien band vibe from them, and absolutely agree with their decision to release them separately

Really?? i feel like honeycomb has that alien radio vibe more than most songs on the actual album

[Curved Hair]

That's fair. Though I do think that a lot of it has to do with how they sequenced or thought of the songs as a whole
(which we can't necessarily understand, because it's not our personal project)

[Curved Hair]

snowtire wrote:

Curved Hair wrote:

I definitely don't get a far away transmission alien band vibe from them, and absolutely agree with their decision to release them separately

Really?? i feel like honeycomb has that alien radio vibe more than most songs on the actual album

Im re-visiting honeycomb now, and yes I agree with you

[Curved Hair]

gotham is on some other shit though.

When I recorded the petaluma show, I was blown away by gotham. My notes said something along the lines of 'totally different AC vibe, guitar based, psych rocked, new direction'. then I got to see how they transformed it live the next four days in a row. I definitely hold some different perspectives on the chz material because I was their for the inception and got to witness everything grow, experience the vibes change, etc. whatever

[Vovenarg]

as for father time, if you don't think it's an amazing song you need to listen co Collages' cover version (as I've said before). you realize how incredibly catchy and well written it is.
the arrangement on the album isn't my favorite either though, so it feels like somewhat of a missed opportunity, but most likely it was just more interesting for them to try that direction with it.
plenty of people dig it too, there's definitely not a unanimous opinion that it's the worst song by any means.

[archie]

i feel like gotham crimson are like brothers how has anyone not mentioned that yet

[Vovenarg]

Vovenarg wrote:

as for father time, if you don't think it's an amazing song you need to listen to Collages' cover version (as I've said before). you realize how incredibly catchy and well written it is.

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/collages/a-long-time-ago-collages[/soundcloud]