Comments

JID is 30. I always thought he was "young-young" (not a bad name for a rapper circa 2021 actually), but nope. He's what makes me wanna check this song. Conway's endless content-puke keeps me from getting amped about his releases on their own at this point. If this were even his first album since From a King to a God I'd maybe be excited, but I need downtime.

Oh my. That is...certainly an album cover.

Who is "they" then? Lennon has been dead for 40+ years now, you know. What was fake about it then - is it inconceivable that the two of them could have wanted peace in general or an end to hostilities in Vietnam? And have you considered that people will buy it or listen to it because they like the music, rather than the asinine straw man that they're trying to create peace with a 50 year old piece of music? People care about Plastic Ono Band because Lennon made an intense, ahead-of-its-time personal record, not because of remnant hippy dreams. The song wasn't even on the original release.

If it sounds at all like Chulahoma I doubt that. But for now that's admittedly a big "if".

Chulahoma is great (oddly, that and Brothers are my two favorite Keys releases), and this and "My Mind is Rambling" are its two pinnacle tracks. Here's hoping they can summon some of that magic.

I'd have gone with The Story of the Ghost, myself, but cool anyway! Sylvan Esso, Strand of Oaks, Chris Forsyth, & Amy Helm excite me, and I could see Walker doing well here, too. The indie scene has been embracing The Grateful Dead for the better part of the last decade now - I like the idea of Phish getting the same respect.

You’re checked out Way Down in the Rust Bucket then, right?

From a Compound Eye is awesome.

By the way - between this and At Dawn (two albums I like-not-love from two of my all-time super-favorite bands who don't always get a ton of love here), SG's anniversary series has been awesome for me this week!

It certainly contributed a few eternal concert bangers.

Like I said above - my #2 favorite, better than Alien Lanes to me. "Big Boring Wedding" and "Don't Stop Now" are both potential Top 10 GbV tracks (but god, so are a lot!), and "Cut Out Witch", "Ghosts of a Different Dream", "The Official Iron Men Rally Song", "Lord of Overstock", "Atom Eyes", "Your Name is Wild" - it just goes ON! I guess it putters out a bit after "It's Like Soul Man", but those last 4 tracks are all still solid.

You would like Do the Collapse, lol. But "Surgical Focus" & "Things That I Will Keep" are both definite highlights, no question there. And Under the Bushes, Under the Stars > Alien Lanes for me (I know Bob & the consensus disagree), putting it at a firm #2 behind B1000. And then it's neck and neck between AL, Propeller, and Universal Truths & Cycles (shout out also to how AMAZING The Bears for Lunch is!).

Bob's vocals here were among his best ever, I agree with that. And yeah, I had a similar experience with my first listen to GbV. My HS journalism teacher, who I talked about & shared music with, burned me Bee Thousand and I remember playing it on my headphones on the bus ride home one day and just being totally blown away/transported. Love at first listen, and before long I was seeing them every time they came to Philly, I had a copy of Universal Truths & Cycles and I think this, and started working through that glorious back catalog.

Nice one, I hadn't figured we'd get a writeup for this. Very interesting, singular album in that huge catalog of theirs for sure. It's sad that this undersold Do the Collapse, because between Propeller and Half Smiles of the Decomposed they really didn't have many serious duds and DtC was the ugly exception to that rule (of course it has a few great tracks - it's GbV). I never thought Isolation Drills was quite a top-notch GbV album, but it's pretty darn good and a lot better than its predecessor. Maybe a little stiff still, but the increased personal-life emotional potency makes up for that a fair amount. I was glad to see the love for the last three LPs of the original run. Universal Truths & Cycles is right up there with the classic run stuff for me - a perfect fusion of that era with the more muscular, slightly higher-production aspirations of DtC/ID era and just overflowing with amazing songs. And then having Bob & Co lean further into their prog side than ever on Earthquake Glue was super cool, especially because they pulled it off so well.

First I've heard of that.

Justice for Philly! Also, Feb 2020 was less pandemic-y and hadn't seen Trumpism culminate into a raid on the capital, but I still don't know if it was more innocent.

That live album they dropped last year was fire. Looking forward to this.

I generally don't love super-spare/minimal sad acoustic indie folk or whatever you wanna call it. I'm the same way with Cat Power - I like the fuller-bodied tracks on You Are Free, the first few soul-indebted tracks on The Greatest, and all of Sun a lot more than the stuff she made her name on and that seems to still be the consensus favorite style for her. I like early I&W a song or two at a time, but it wasn't until the first Calexico collab In the Reins (the more recent one, which I totally forgot about until right now, was also good - his best since probably The Shepherd's Dog for me) that a full release connected for me. All it really comes down to though is that I think The Shepherd's Dog is brilliant and everything else he's done is just varying degrees of good on an album level.

Also, cool!

Why did Prince Paul need to be introduced as "De La Soul/Dan The Automator collaborator Prince Paul"? Has he become significantly less well known than The Automator at some point? He just did that well-received first season of Open Mike Eagle's What Had Happened Was podcast.