TheMaker

Still my favourite album of the year by a ridiculous margin. The Pitchfork review is a fucking joke. It's condescending, reductivist, short-sighted and ultimately just plain wrong-headed. The douche who wrote it is certainly allowed to like or dislike whatever he pleases, but his argument here is just some thin stew, in my opinion. "It sounds like a very well-produced Dan Fogelberg song, until James drops 'interweb' on us like a sack of dirty socks." And? It's cute. Nobody seems to complain about "Jebus," a Simpsons reference, in what many (most?) fans consider the best song the band has ever

I'll second that, for sure. It's about time we get to hear this!

I think Craig Northey is one of the more underrated songwriters around. Good Weird Feeling is a top ten of the '90s record for me (it feels a bit dated now, but no more so than anything by Matthew Sweet or, say, the Posies), and I think the new New Odds is really solid after a couple listens. Haven't had the time to cozy up to it just yet, though!

I was born in '79. When I discovered Dylan in earnest 20 years later, I felt much the same way. This is definitely my music, and it'll resonate for many more folks for decades yet to come.

Heh. The greatest American artist of the 20th Century vs. Tweedy? I'm here because this is a Wilco board, but my official response to this thread is "lol."

Ditto, although in my case it'd be a 12ish hour bus trip to Columbus. Ain't gonna happen, basically because I'm too poor to justify even catching a localish show (although I would, without hesitation, skip several days worth of proper meals to see Waits just once in my life) and because there's no way that I can afford to be away from home for three days just because of a single two-hour concert. Jesus, Tom, EAST COAST. We love you, you old goat. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll never see you because you hate us, but when you do this again in two or three years, man, don't go spoil

God fucking dammit. He hates Canada. Just fucking loathes us. Enjoy him for me, guys, cuz I'll never see him live.

Ha! Dollars to donuts, the writer engaging in all that self-flagellation by proxy is white himself. What a truly embarrassing waste of time and energy.

I'm in the I've-only-read-Choke category, too, but I thought it was execrable. Not only does it contain the single most awkward colloquialism for load-blowing that I've ever laid eyes on ("toss my soldiers" - what the fuck?), there's maybe enough plot spread out over 250 large-print pages to support a briskly paced short story. The whole thing felt like a highly superficial and largely pointless exercise to me.

Trying not to freak out. Trying not to freak out. Trying not to freak out.

Yeah, I'm with solace, but I'll drop my jaw even further to the ground and say that this assessment is just bugfuck insane. This is definitely their best-of-decade but it can't even touch the hem of their '90s garment. Can't even touch it.

Yeah, Spencer (and Dan, for that matter) has been on a downhill slide ever since Apologies, really. He just keeps becoming more and more self-indulgent with each project, it seems. That said, it's weird to me that his biggest problem on this disc is that his songs are mostly pretty boring and never really get off the ground. I think California Dreamer is a great song, but the rest of his tunes are disappointing. Dan, on the other hand, sounds revitalized, and I think quite a few of his songs are winners here. Maybe it's me, but I get a real psychedelic, early '70s vibe from the entire record.

Coughtunneloflovecough... Still, both of those albums are fucking perfect. As in, "could not be better." Solid songwriting will often overcome even the most egregious production-oriented handicap.

After a bunch of listens this weekend (while suffering through the worst stomach flu of my life, guh) I can honestly say that I find this to be their best work since Between the Bridges, released almost a decade ago. And that track of Andrew's is absolutely a a Dylan pastiche. I love how disparate his tunes are here, and I love how amazing Jay's are. Witch's Wand is absolutely one of the best songs these guys have ever released. Good stuff! This + MMJ's Evil Urges = the sound of my summer, most likely.

Don't thank me too hard, Mr. Heartbreak. The rest of your bullet points had me thinking that you might have the worst taste in music of anybody on the board. Oh, here's another one I got yelled at for saying in another thread months ago: Prince is horrible, a few individual songs notwithstanding.

Hooray! This is streaming in full on Yep Roc's site. (And it's another good one, thankfully, not the phoned-in April Wine crap they were dead set on producing for a while there.)

I also think hip-hop and rap are crap. Not adding flames to the fire, believe me, just being honest. I don't even like Public Enemy. Further controversy!: I think it's bad enough that middle-class black kids are listening to this stuff, but at least they can squint and see how it might relate to their experience; when white kids listen to it, I can't help but feel they're contributing to the modern minstrelsy.

The album's streaming now from the site, and holy shit, it's amazing. And I'm saying this as a man who believes strongly that Petty hasn't done anything worth listening to in 20 years. I'm flabbergasted. This could be the best album he's ever made. Seriously. It's straight up Flying Burrito Brothers meets the first Heartbreakers album meets Full Moon Fever.

For sure! MMJ is all I'm listening to this week, no foolin'. I listened to At Dawn and Z the other day, and right now I prefer EU to both of those records. Even though it has most of their best songs, the tracklisting for At Dawn has always fucked with me; it rocks out, pulls back for 12 minutes and two dirgelike songs, rocks out again, pulls back, etc. I really have to be in the right mood for that disc.

Oh, I don't skip tracks as a rule. I won't even own an iPod... I do think the song is pretty bad, but that said, there's something there that prevents me from writing it off completely. The refrain is really interesting, and the sheer bombast is, um, something. Heh. The whole thing is like some psychotic carnivalesque... it reminds me of the following page of art whenever I hear it. Heh. http://batman.ugo.com/images/galleries/bat...llingjoke_6.jpg

Yeah, and there's at least one great YouTube vid out there that shows Jim vamping the HELL out of it, his back to the audience and his face scrunched up, digging into the lyrics/singing. It's laugh out loud hilarious, in my opinion. I think a LOT of people are taking Highly Suspicious way too seriously. No way is it in the same stratosphere of awfulness as Into the Woods (and I may get stoned for saying this, but there are draggy, overlong songs on At Dawn that I like even less than it), and if you've been spinning the record regularly this week like I've been, then I'll call you a liar to y

Wow. I could have written that about this record. It's almost like this is MMJ's A Ghost is Born, a bit of a sampler platter with all kinds of different styles represented, most all of them wonderfully executed. And I agree that it isn't really "experimental," for all the advance press made it out to be some total departure for the band. It's a very logical extension of the sound they moved gracefully into with Z, and the songcraft is exceptional as always. I swear, MMJ and Wilco are the two bands these days that can't make a bad record.

Wow, I wasn't expecting this to be such a divisive record! I think it's fucking incredible, personally. Just the biggest summer anthem disc these guys have put out to date, which is really saying something. The title track is one of the ten best things Jim's ever written, and the slower songs are just vamping it up halfway between Al Green and Wilco territory. I still think Highly Suspicious is way too silly to be enjoyable, though. That was true of the live versions from last month, and the studio recording doesn't really do anything to improve the song. Librarian is timelessly gorgeous, as f

I was going to call you a mendicant and tell you to get lost, but then I saw that you had 700 posts. Fair play to you, wanderer.

I think it's okay, but not great. Not as good as the last one, certainly, and maybe a bit overblown. There are lots of musical/lyrical references to older songs on it, though (notably the entire last movement of A Quick One While He's Away, which made my draw drop when I heard it), and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.