[potatobroth]

What a great topic and one I'd expect to see a great number of opinions on. My opinion is that I'd rather hear the finished track before the preleases. While I love Oblivion with Bells, I was a bit sad when I realized that I recognized more than half of the tracks from snippets or even full-songs. The initial wow was a bit lost.

There is also that weird phenomenon that comes with knowing a song from a live set or radio broadcast one way, and then hearing the release another way. Even though the release may be superior in every way, the way you heard it the first time just sounds 'right' and the release sounds well, wrong. Globe/Holding the Moth fits right into this category. While the album version is growing on me, it still sounded wrong when compared to the 2 or 3 live versions I'd heard prior. This also touches on what KoS is saying above.