[botkiller]

I like it, but it lacks a few things:

1. No sing along worthy track. Barking had always loved a film, OWB had "Crocodile" and "beautiful burnout", this album lacks a song I want to sing along with. Karl's vocals are buried in a lot of reverb. I do enjoy the bits where he comes thru a bit more, a la the vocal change in Bruce Lee wherein his vox go from effect laden to dry as hell.

2. First 4 tracks are really tight, even with a little bit of that original sound, but it sort of falls off at track 5 and the train slows down a lot. I'm ok with this most of the time, but I felt a little tossed off the tracks after Santiago Cuatro.

3. I would be happy if the whole album were more like "low burn". It has that deep groove that I just sort of roll around in.

4. It's not very long. 45 mins? I mean, that's ok, I don't need 10 minute bangers all the time, but I'm missing some of that really bearing into the groove feel. I know, I know, Juanita/Kiteless won't happen again, and I know that, but, I still like it when I really have time to settle into the groove.

Overall, I like it, not my top album, certainly one I'll enjoy from time to time. I think of the material in post-Emerson days, I still prefer 100 days off and OWB. There was something very sad about "Barking". I was driving to Arizona once listening to that album, and I sort of wanted to cry through most of it. Scribble sort of makes me feel like I'm being punched in the bridge of the nose by something very sad. Am I the only one that hears this? I guess it's always sort of been there in UW's material, I mean, even Dirty Epic was a sad song in its own way, Born Slippy always was a little sad besides being a banger. I guess there's always been a bit of melancholy in UW's material, maybe I just pick up on it more in my later years.

That's the power of UW's music, really, and one of the major reasons that I've always loved it. I also lost a good friend of mine who really got me further into UW in the early 00s to suicide two years ago, so now listening to their music sometimes has that tinge of downness that I can't describe. That's just me.

Please keep in mind that I've been listening to UW since the mid-90s when I was just a teen, so yes, I'm probably always going to be stuck, like a needle in the record groove, on some of those things that I always really reveled in with their sound.

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, here. I'm always grateful when the boys release something new, so I'm certainly not ungrateful for this album. I just sometimes want that straight 909 kick with the energy of the earlier material. That's why I can go back through all of it, I guess. I do prefer to hear artists progress and grow in their sound, instead of doing the same thing over and over again. I've always been in awe of UW's ability to simply keep creating.

Thank you for making more art, Karl and Rick, and as always, please keep doing it, we're all glad that you do.