[dubman]

good thread.

for me the thing with OWB is that it has as many pratfalls as AHDO and BF, it's just that as with each successive album, the falls come a bit harder than last time. skym and mama just had really ill-advised moments, but were still listenable. Trim and DA3D were mildly embarassing to listen to overall, each one potentially displaying a band with its quality filters turned off and losing the ear for something special as opposed to just different.
on this album the lows are so low that its come to a love/hate fiasco. ring road, with its preposterous drums and a shouty pseudo-beat poet/unmusical vocals, is so brazenly unconcerned with sounding like anything we've heard before and tap into something really 80s about them that you'll eventually be charmed by it or just get disgusted. speaking of the 80's... boy, boy, boy is almost irredeemable. i didnt really want to hear it live, and nothing's changed because of that. i think it's bombastic and pretentious and overblown and shitty. it sounds bad from the first second with it's tinny beat to the last asinine string section. it is the worst thing they've done. worse than a grand majority of underneath the radar.

with that said, faxed invitation and glam bucket handily make up for it by showing them at their most brilliant (something which AHDO, for all its great tracks, never managed to acheive).
other songs range from decent to great. i keep warming up to crocodile AND the video for it (purely because i'm in my garage when i play it and i'm always walking around doing something... hmmm nicely familiar). BB is pretty good, but not innovative in the least. got into holding the moth pretty severely today, to heal is still very nice. I DONT SEE WHAT YOU PEOPLE HAVE AGAINST CUDDLE BUNNY. as far as atmospheric tracks go it's absolutely beautiful and real. i'm so glad they included something pushing them just that much more somewhere else, that and just the sounds of it are really inspiring. cockerel is great too. not a huge fa of mamgu as it's a drawl of downtempo with some pretty things around but totally aimless. i'll take it but least inspired closing from them ever. i may not be a fan of M.E. but it certainly attempted SOMETHING.

so if we're going by skipping tracks:

dubno: M.E
STITI: Juanita (sue me. it goes too long. i skipped it and listened to the rest and it felt so much more complete and whole)
BF: Skym and winjer 75% of the time. Jumbo 50%. something like a mama 25%
AHDO: Twist 25% of the time. Sola sistim, Trim, and DA3D 100% of the time. LITTLE SPEAKER AND ESSGEE ARE ALWAYS PLAYED BECAUSE THEY'RE GREAT
OWB: Ring Road 70% of the time. Boy Boy Boy 100%. i 'forget' to play Mamgu about 50%