| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| natenate101 |
Posted - 06/04/2019 : 05:40:24
I'm pasting a album biography taken from the band's PR company site. It's a helluva read but I want to give a spoiler alert as it has descriptions of the album tracks. Might be some that don't want any of that seeping into their heads before hearing the album in full. Proceed at your own risk, sort of.....it's a helluva read.
BIOGRAPHY
Beneath The Eyrie
They’re out at the old church, the locals said, hiding in the shadow of the one-armed cross. Holed up in cabins crawling with critters, firing up the organ every morning, wailing songs of curses, death, witchcraft and unsatisfied spirits late into the night, on guitars embedded with their own dead teeth.
Pixies, they call ‘em, out there in the wilds of Woodstock, beneath the eyrie.
“It felt a bit haunted,” says bass Pixie Paz Lenchantin of Pixies’ four weeks at Dreamland Recording Studio, in the frost-bitten run-up to Christmas 2018. “We could’ve been filming a Blair Witch at the same time. The aura was thick. There was definitely a fifth member inside the church.”
The making of the third new album since Pixies reformed in 2004 was cold on the bones, but warm on the marrow. After three decades beset with upheavals, splits, trials, and tribulations, Pixies was finally a band at ease with itself. Their first era - when Charles Thompson IV returned from a student exchange trip to Puerto Rico, dropped out of college, renamed himself Black Francis and, in January 1986, convinced his ex-University of Massachusetts Amherst roommate Joey Santiago to start a band with him - redefined alternative rock and set the dynamic blueprint not just for grunge but underground guitar music for decades to come, but it was as fiery and turbulent off-record as on. Even as Francis turned his Pentecostal upbringing, flair for all things Spanish and interest in the seedier, more violent Biblical tales and mythologies into gruesome yet melodic punk noirs on seminal early albums Surfer Rosa (1988) and Doolittle (1989), and indulged his sci-fi obsessions on the silvered savagery of Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991), the band fought and fractured. By 1993, the combination of Francis’s rabid roars and saccharine pop babbles, Santiago’s rattlesnake guitar squirms, Dave Lovering’s brutalist drumming, and Kim Deal’s cat-purr basslines had made them influential, era-defining indie rock giants. But they were Pixies no more.
Re-emerging in 2004, Pixies rode back into a town they’d designed on a wave of dark jubilation, headlining festivals such as Reading & Leeds and gathering plaudits like shrunken heads in a bag. Their first new song in thirteen years, “Bam Thwok,” topped download charts in 2004, but there were still rocks in the road ahead. Reluctant to make a new album, Deal left the band in 2013, so Pixies’ sensational sonic sprawl of a comeback album, Indie Cindy (released as three EPs in 2013-14, then compiled into an album) was recorded with Jeremy Dubs of Bunnies on bass, and toured with Muffs singer Kim Shattuck stage left. Lenchantin, boasting A Perfect Circle, Queens of The Stone Age and Zwan on her immaculate indie rock CV, replaced Shattuck for the 2014 tour, becoming a fully paid-up Pixie in 2016, in time to record the abrasive sixth album Head Carrier (2016). That album saw long-term producer Gil Norton replaced by Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood). “That was quite invigorating, trying something new,” says Dave, and its tour saw one last rattle off-road.
“We coasted over it,” Dave says of Joey having to leave the tour to enter rehab in 2016. “It was a wrench thrown in, but as usual we just picked up and carried on, for the better of Joe. Joe’s been a trouper, he’s been nailing it, so it’s been wonderful. I’m glad it all happened actually.” “When you don’t drink there’s a lot of clarity,” says Black Francis, himself trying his hand at sobriety for a while. “So when he stopped drinking… you got more of Joey. As a non-drinking musician, Joey’s a lot more in control of what he’s doing, the execution is so much more crisp and immediate.”
With Joey back in the fray, his Pixie claws cleaned and sharpened, the band regrouped - “stronger than ever, it feels like a real family,” says Paz - and resumed their relentless touring schedule, taking in a co-headline tour with Weezer in summer 2018 (“Everything about it was fantastic,” says Dave, “it was a circus”) and live residencies in New York and London, immersed in the early Pixies artwork of Vaughan Oliver, to celebrate the 30th anniversary and deluxe reissue of Surfer Rosa (Dave: “A joy to play, those songs are like riding a bike”).
Meantime, new sounds started bubbling out of the cauldron again. A handful of songs that hadn’t stewed quite long enough to make it onto Head Carrier were still in the mix. A clutch more came together during three weeks of pre-production rehearsals up near Charles’s place in Massachusetts, spring of ‘18. A few more ideas span themselves out of sound checks, spidery little critters. By the time Pixies wended their way to Woodstock that winter, they had half an album pulling them this way and that, like will-o’-the-wisps coming in from the woods.
All sonic intentions, as is Pixies’ way, were left unsaid. “There’s no speaking of music,” says Paz; what would come would come. But there was a sense of freedom in Dreamland’s ghost-thick aura, of a consolidation period, completed and horizons thrown wide. Indie Cindy had been an exploratory, transitional foray out of their comfort zone, imagining what music Pixies would have been making during their decade stranded on some faraway planet of sound - by turns frenzied, glacial and sci-fi serene. Head Carrier had taken them, in Joey’s words “back to Pixie-land”, a dense, inward-looking record, by Pixies for Pixies, nodding to Surfer Rosa and Doolittle as Dalgety pushed everything into the red. This time, even as they joked and cooked and meshed creatively like never before in their communal house - “It definitely felt really solid as a band,” Francis recalls, “we arrived as a band, intact” - each Pixie brought their own secretive piece to the puzzle.
“At one point I thought that we were going for some kind of western sound and I kinda ran with that for myself,” Joey reveals. “I was into Ennio Morricone again, a grown-up version of surf music. Anytime I could put a western twang on there, I’d try my darndest to do it.” Paz, encouraged to contribute songs and lyrics during wine-fueled late night writing sessions with Francis emerged with two songs, “The Long Rider” and “Los Surfer Muertes,” dedicated to a surfing friend and “legend in the water” called Desiree who died catching waves while Paz was recording Head Carrier: “It was a fluke,” she says “the fin hit her and she drowned. It’s in a light spirit - she couldn’t think of a better way to go.”
And as for Francis, who spent most mornings teasing melodies out of the church’s organ, he allowed himself one word of dark guidance. “Before we embarked on the record I said to Tom ‘I don’t know, but maybe this record is gonna have a more gothic feel.’ When we arrived at the studio, it’s a kinda spooky, gothic kind of a place, so if something suggested lyrically or musically something gothic, we made it more gothic, because that was the improv word that had been thrown at us. Anything that suggested gothic, we totally embraced it. So the record overall has that kind of a vibe. Every song fits that category. It’s a little bit darker. It’s elemental; it’s moon, sky, water, tree, earth, ice, wind, spirits, animal spirits, death, battling or grappling with something, with forces, some of them seen, some of them unseen.”
How dense the macabre? Francis even brought along a four-stringed guitar he’d had custom made with a large molar he’d recently lost embedded in resin in the headstock, roots and all. “I think it’s cool,” he says, “but most people I show it to find it gross or weird.”
No wonder Pixies emerged from Dreamland with a record - Beneath The Eyrie, named after the bald eagle’s nest – or “eyrie” - that Dave spotted in a tree by some abandoned railroad tracks just behind the studio - that reads like a dusty book of eerie folklore tales, full of black arts, Byronesque imagery, death, and its aftermath. “On Graveyard Hill,” the cranky new wave “Debaser” that was Paz’s third co-write on the record, pictures a witch called Donna casting a fatal curse - or is it a love spell? - on her unsuspecting lover. “This Is My Fate,” (“a Twilight Zone episode,” according to Charles) portraits a drunkard riding the mule trains out of Harmony Borax in Death Valley, high on mandrake root. The dreamy alt-pop limbo of “Daniel Boone,” inspired by Francis almost hitting a reindeer on a foggy drive to the church, imagines a spirit rising from the wreckage that might have been, bound for reincarnation.
Most Coleridgean of all is “Silver Bullet,” a visceral Morricone gunfight theme left over from Head Carrier, in which a “man condemned” wanders the night, hunting out a duel to end his internal torment. “It’s become more doppelganger,” Francis says. “Right after the song was done my daughter was like ‘silver bullet? This is a werewolf song.” After she told me that it did take on that kind of aspect to it. Whether it’s literally a werewolf I don’t know, but it’s definitely one wrestling with oneself.”
Supernatural beings abound. The furious, frustrated punk searching the streets of “St Nazaire” for a “selkie bride.” a Gaelic seal woman who can return to the sea if her seal coat survives her romantic liaisons. And then there’s Black Jack Hooligan, the Scottish sprite telling the tale of how his girlfriend became known as “Catfish Kate.” “This is a story from my childhood that I inherited from my father,” Charles says of the album’s breezy, infectious track. “I told the same story to my kids when they were younger. Kate’s up there in the mountains of South Dakota or wherever in the 1800s, she’s living in the world of Native Americans and fur traders and soldiers and wanderers. She falls into the river one day, she’s taken into the river by a giant catfish, she wrestles with the catfish. There’s a gothic feel to that, this woman battling with a monster-sized catfish, emerging from the water wearing the skin of the catfish as her new robe with the blood dripping – ‘I am alive, I battled all night long with the catfish, and I won, I ripped him open.’ She’s victorious.”
Here, and throughout the record, a painful subtext is at play. Black Francis has recently undergone a divorce, the lyrical impact of which he was unaware of as the songs came together but is blinding in retrospect. Compulsive album opener “In The Arms Of Mrs. Mark Of Cain” speaks of being content in a cursed relationship (note the piano reprise from “Motorway To Roswell” at the end). “Ready For Love” is as blatantly, brutally romantic as Pixies have ever dared to be. The bitter, snarling “Bird Of Prey” might be told from the perspective of what Francis describes as “an unsatisfied spirit riding a Calèshe like the ghost-riders in the sky - ‘I am here to haunt again because I am not satisfied,’” but linger too long on lines like “you’ve stolen my tomorrow/So I come for it today/You stole it when you stole my yesterday” and even Francis admits it’s a divorce song: “I didn’t necessarily know it at the time but I do now. It’s a song of longing I guess… it’s about the loss of love.”
Death hangs heavy over Beneath The Eyrie, not least on the deceptively jaunty campfire closer, “Death Horizon,” Here’s a vast millennium of endings. Short term, it’s the death of a relationship. Medium term, the extinction of humanity by its own carbon smothered hand. And long term, the death of the Earth in a supernova fireball. A near infinity of horizons, each darker than the last. “Here we are standing on the seashore looking at the horizon,” says Francis, “and even though the sun, for all of our lives represents life, we know from our knowledge of the stars that one day that star disappears. That star blows up or implodes or whatever stars do when they finish their cycle. That usually means the end of everything in its orbit. We already know what the end of the story is, so there’s that more cosmic finality. There’s the death of the here and now and the things that are important to us in our current lives, then there’s the death of humanity, and then there’s the ultimate one - at the end of the day it all goes up in a supernova anyway. If you were gonna add a fourth level to it, it’s also the death of the record, isn’t it? It’s like ‘you’ve heard everything, you’ve heard all of the stories, you’ve heard the songs, you’ve experienced everything, the record’s over now’.”
Beneath The Eyrie recaptures the rabid velocity, boundless invention and vivid, enveloping aesthetic of Pixies’ legendary early albums without feeling the need to recreate them. Instead the band toys with new wave, ragtime, Gallic noir, western psych, doom rock, Weezer pop and the vaudevillian cabaret they only hinted at on “Mr. Grieves.” “We can do any kind of song, it doesn’t matter if it’s reggae, ska, jazz, Europop, we can make an attempt at it,” says Dave, and the creativity in full flow now that Pixies are a solid family again is evinced by the fact that eight or nine songs from the album’s demo sessions will be released as a companion album. “There are at least two of them that I really like,” says Dave. “I wish they were on the album. One or two of them might be better than the record so it might take off!”
For the first time, we’ll get a peek behind the curtain of Beneath The Eyrie too. Journalist Tony Fletcher miked up the band and studio for the entire month to document the making of the record for a podcast series called “It’s a Pixies Podcast,” premiering in June. A podcast liable to bury Pixies’ reputation as glowering devils forever. “In our later years, we joke and play around way, way, way more than ever in the past,” Dave says, and Joey agrees. “People are gonna be surprised how not precious we are making a record. There’s a lot of buffoonery and Dalgetafoolery going on. People probably think we’re really serious about making our craft but, to us, it’s one big fun-fest.”
There they were, Pixies, out at the church with the one-armed cross, cackling into the night. Weaving music that grips like a spell, crushes like a curse.
# # #
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| 35 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| tamefan |
Posted - 10/06/2024 : 11:22:25
"On Graveyard Hill" should have been called "Donna." |
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 04/25/2022 : 08:45:00
Holy moses, see the movie. I can't even comprehend how those songs even work divorced from the movie. They are all about what is happening in the film. |
| Sprite |
Posted - 04/25/2022 : 02:06:05
Never seen the movie but its definitely my favourite Talking Heads album. Played it an awful lot of times back in day. Would love to see FB&C cover Puzzlin' Evidence. |
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 04/24/2022 : 19:35:22
quote:
Originally posted by Ziggy
Sat down with the band for an interview the other week (coming soon!). Couldn't help echoing these thoughts, and I think they were a little taken aback, particularly regarding the demo disk!
This is crazy, because after posting that I had a kind of day dream about if I met Frank, I'd want to tell him this and ask about those songs, and wondering if he'd find that weird. It's like when I met David Byrne randomly all I could say was "True Stories is my favorite movie!!" (this was pre-Criterion release and it getting a new following) and he seemed surprised. |
| Brank_Flack |
Posted - 04/24/2022 : 06:54:21
Cool - I look forward to reading it! |
| Ziggy |
Posted - 04/23/2022 : 07:49:59
quote:
Originally posted by Troubles A Foot
I listened to Beneath The Eyrie and the demo album (which I call Beneath Beneath The Eyrie) three times this week.
I still have this strange experience with it. BTE is this incredibly accomplished work, with some great songs, it sounds really good, the album is thematically consistent with a great flow and some huge hits on it and a great ending. I love listening to it and have found it kind of addictive this week. I'm like good job, Frank.
Then that demo album comes on and it literally makes me cry. I just love it so much. I think it's the perfect combo of Frank solo/Pixies as a kind of new third thing. The lyrics are so interesting to me, Frank's vocal is so full of feeling and fuck-it punk energy, Paz sounds great all around, Joey is rocking the hell out of the joint, and Lowery too (sorry I don't know what to say about drums.) Frank's rhythm guitar leads the way and sounds excellent. However they set up or mic'd the guitars on this "demo", they did a great job. I still consider these 9 songs one of my all-time favorite albums and a top Frank album, whatever the context. I haven't been this into his material and moved by it (on all levels) since Bluefinger.
It's really weird. I guess it's a huge accomplishment that they can make an album this good but then simultaneously put out an album that (to me) is even better. Probably not easy to do for most bands.
Sat down with the band for an interview the other week (coming soon!). Couldn't help echoing these thoughts, and I think they were a little taken aback, particularly regarding the demo disk! |
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 04/22/2022 : 09:06:21
I listened to Beneath The Eyrie and the demo album (which I call Beneath Beneath The Eyrie) three times this week.
I still have this strange experience with it. BTE is this incredibly accomplished work, with some great songs, it sounds really good, the album is thematically consistent with a great flow and some huge hits on it and a great ending. I love listening to it and have found it kind of addictive this week. I'm like good job, Frank.
Then that demo album comes on and it literally makes me cry. I just love it so much. I think it's the perfect combo of Frank solo/Pixies as a kind of new third thing. The lyrics are so interesting to me, Frank's vocal is so full of feeling and fuck-it punk energy, Paz sounds great all around, Joey is rocking the hell out of the joint, and Lowery too (sorry I don't know what to say about drums.) Frank's rhythm guitar leads the way and sounds excellent. However they set up or mic'd the guitars on this "demo", they did a great job. I still consider these 9 songs one of my all-time favorite albums and a top Frank album, whatever the context. I haven't been this into his material and moved by it (on all levels) since Bluefinger.
It's really weird. I guess it's a huge accomplishment that they can make an album this good but then simultaneously put out an album that (to me) is even better. Probably not easy to do for most bands. |
| Bedbug |
Posted - 11/07/2020 : 14:58:30
quote:
Originally posted by Sprite
Still blown away at just how good Bird of Prey is. A top ten Pixies tune.
The opinions on this forum remain ever so diverse. Love it. |
| Sprite |
Posted - 11/07/2020 : 05:05:06
Still blown away at just how good Bird of Prey is. A top ten Pixies tune. |
| The Maharal |
Posted - 01/19/2020 : 09:10:49
The big guitar bit sounds familiar - possibly something they borrowed from a Mott the Hoople song? |
| pmjk |
Posted - 01/17/2020 : 01:21:52
Mick Ralphs, get a writing credit on Silver Bullet, but I didn't see this on the vinyl sleeve.
Can anyone shed any light on this? |
| natenate101 |
Posted - 10/10/2019 : 19:42:43
quote:
Originally posted by Cult_Of_Frank
I am quite enjoying this new Pixies album I have to say. It doesn't feel like it's trying to recapture something or be something, it feels like FB. I guess genuine is the word here. It's the first time in a while that I've wanted to really dig into the lyrics, which might be my own bias, but I'm glad to have this and really do have to agree with Coastline here. I didn't dislike the previous Pixies 2.0 albums but I didn't love them either. I'm on my way with this one...
 "If we hit this bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
I agree with you guys as well. Just a really well made and enjoyable set of tunes from BF and the band. Joey shines for me on this one. The opener is the only song I actually dislike. It grates on me. But everything else is quality and rewards repeat listens. They crafted a great album here. |
| Cult_Of_Frank |
Posted - 10/10/2019 : 11:08:43
I am quite enjoying this new Pixies album I have to say. It doesn't feel like it's trying to recapture something or be something, it feels like FB. I guess genuine is the word here. It's the first time in a while that I've wanted to really dig into the lyrics, which might be my own bias, but I'm glad to have this and really do have to agree with Coastline here. I didn't dislike the previous Pixies 2.0 albums but I didn't love them either. I'm on my way with this one...
"If we hit this bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." |
| coastline |
Posted - 10/08/2019 : 01:53:43
I think you nailed it, Jason. And for me, it's the first time I've fallen in love with a new Pixies album. I discovered the band just after they broke up, so I didn't even know about their first five albums when they were coming out. And IC and HC didn't do anything for me, nor did a live show a few years ago -- I just didn't feel it. This album, though, has consumed me for the last three weeks. I haven't been so in love with a new album -- by anyone -- in ages. And it's definitely Frank writing great songs, and the band making them Pixies songs. So, so good.
__________________________________________________
If all you see is violins, then I make a plea in their defense. |
| Jason |
Posted - 10/07/2019 : 00:19:48
This album is so, so good.
I liked "Indie Cindy" and I liked "Head Carrier", but this is the first neo-Pixies album that makes me not miss Frank's solo and Catholics days. It feels like the band have moved past trying to live up to their brand and Frank is just writing great songs like he always has. It sounds like the pressure is now off. It's a good thing. |
| marcusb |
Posted - 10/03/2019 : 02:28:34
Ah, I haven't really kept up on their latest releases. As much as I love them, they just release so much stuff it's hard to keep up with (and pay for).
-Marcus |
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 10/02/2019 : 10:10:29
The song "Rock Club", previously known by fans as "We Love All The People."
If you like TMBG check out my crazy TMBG podcast! On all streaming services is here: https://anchor.fm/dontletsstart
Sorry everyone for going off topic...
|
| marcusb |
Posted - 10/02/2019 : 09:47:11
quote:
Originally posted by Troubles A Foot
The only example I have of myself doing something like that is two things...there's a tmbg song that never really made it onto an album but then they put out some version that had this intro I hated. So I edited the intro out before putting it on my ipod.
I love TMBG, I'm curious what song you are talking about
-Marcus |
| marce |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 16:26:55
I really like how both albums complement each other. Love the rawer vibe of the bonus tracks! |
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 10:47:14
quote:
Originally posted by johnnyribcage
quote:
Originally posted by tamefan
quote:
Originally posted by The Maharal
If you could combine the two albums into one reasonably-timed collection what would you include?
in fact, I have already used Audacity to increase the tempos on Graveyard, St. Nazaire, Hey Debussy, and Kate by 10%).
.
Wait... so when you listen to BTE, you listen to tracks that you’ve modified and fundamentally changed? No offense, but I find that to be kind of weird.
Wow that really is weird.
The only example I have of myself doing something like that is two things...there's a tmbg song that never really made it onto an album but then they put out some version that had this intro I hated. So I edited the intro out before putting it on my ipod.
The other one is a rare Morrissey song that had various versions of different quality, and one had an extended ending that I glued to a previous version where it faded out early. But these were unreleased songs. |
| Discoking |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 04:44:02
quote:
Originally posted by sdon
Also "Cyrus" is misspelled Cyprus on my LP :)
same here.
 it's educational |
| Bedbug |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 04:09:11
Cue “Punk Rock City”! We are genetically altering FBF tunes! |
| johnnyribcage |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 03:13:58
quote:
Originally posted by tamefan
quote:
Originally posted by The Maharal
If you could combine the two albums into one reasonably-timed collection what would you include?
in fact, I have already used Audacity to increase the tempos on Graveyard, St. Nazaire, Hey Debussy, and Kate by 10%).
.
Wait... so when you listen to BTE, you listen to tracks that you’ve modified and fundamentally changed? No offense, but I find that to be kind of weird.
I had a bad reaction to your public hobby writings. |
| tamefan |
Posted - 10/01/2019 : 00:34:39
quote:
Originally posted by The Maharal
If you could combine the two albums into one reasonably-timed collection what would you include?
BTE is already 39 minutes: the same length as Bossanova, Doolittle, and Trompe. So it's difficult to go by time. If I were making a BTE-demos album, I would do three things: (1) aim for 15 tracks, (2) shorten many songs (Silver Bullet, Los Surfers, Caught in a Dream, Please Don't Go)... a song like Debussy should be a full 60 seconds shorter, and (3) increase the tempo on several songs which would also reduce total time (in fact, I have already used Audacity to increase the tempos on Graveyard, St. Nazaire, Hey Debussy, and Kate by 10%).
My 15 tracks, in order, would be:
Silver Bullet
On Graveyard Hill
Long Rider
Bird of Prey
St. Nazaire
Los Surfers Muertos
Catfish Kate
Hey Debussy
This is My Fate
Mark of Cain
Chapel Hill
Ready for Love
Daniel Boone
Under the Marigold
Caught In A Dream
This is roughly the order I listen to the album now. |
| Discoking |
Posted - 09/30/2019 : 23:31:07
"Caught in a Dream" is the bonus track on the Japanese cd release.
So that's one track that has been made available elsewhere...
it's educational |
| pot |
Posted - 09/30/2019 : 12:32:32
Both albums have a few fillery tracks, but that's OK because Mark of Cain, Boone, Chapel Hill, Hey Debussy and the last two rocking numbers at the end. Please Don't Go can go if it wants, and the indy poppy ones too (Graveyard Hill and Catfish Kate) so bored of hearing them on Radio 6. I knew I was going to get tired of listening to both those tracks fairly early on. |
| johnnyribcage |
Posted - 09/30/2019 : 10:12:53
I really don’t think these demos and the album work well together. The songs don’t compliment each other side by side in my opinion. I did mess around with trying to figure out a mix, but it didn’t flow. Not just because of the production, but the songs themselves. Jarring.
For me it would be like trying to mix Svn Fngrs and BTE. I find the songs and approaches to be that different.
I had a bad reaction to your public hobby writings. |
| Bedbug |
Posted - 09/30/2019 : 09:05:12
Wouldn’t
Change
A Thing
About BTE
Love
The
Demos too |
| sdon |
Posted - 09/30/2019 : 01:24:14
quote:
Originally posted by The Maharal
If you could combine the two albums into one reasonably-timed collection what would you include? I'd have something like this, probably a few flow issues as I have thrown it together without too much thought in the ordering.
In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain
On Graveyard Hill
Chapel Hill
Caught In A Dream
Catfish Kate
This Is My Fate
Silver Bullet
St. Nazaire
Hey, Debussy
How I Learned To Earn Rewards
I Just Can't Break It To You
Bird of Prey
Daniel Boone
Death Horizon
I'm tempted to shunt On Graveyard Hill as for me the chorus is pretty weak but it's a rare fast-paced song. Would also cut a few seconds off Debussy.
I caught myself singing Caught In A Dream on the street earlier. It's got a lovely melody and I'm just realising the end of it echoes No 13 Baby a little.
Cyrus
Graveyard
Chapel
Fate
Caught
Prey
Mal de Mer
Cain
Don't Go
Surfers
Debussy (shorter)
Horizon
Marigold (shorter)
--
"Aristophanes! (gong sounds)"
"Fucking up my devotion!"
|
| Troubles A Foot |
Posted - 09/29/2019 : 16:39:36
The minor arpeggio chord thing in Mark of Cain is extremely gothic, it sounds like something off of a Gothic Archies song or The Cure or something. That's why reviews call it gothic, because one of the first things on the album is a blatantly gothic musical motif. There's also supernatural and witch references in some songs, which is as gothic as it gets.
MOST OF THE ALBUM, THOUGH? Not super gothic. But sometimes a few motifs on an album stand out so much that the album as a whole seems to take that shape. TMBG's album John Henry has 5 songs about car crashes. But there's 20 songs on the album. So only 1/4th of the album has car crash songs, but to me it's the car crash album, just from how it's spread out all over it (and begins and ends that way too like bookends.)
|
| johnnyribcage |
Posted - 09/29/2019 : 14:43:37
quote:
Originally posted by The Maharal
Not sure if the All Music Guide review was posted. It's a nice review and refreshingly doesn't use the word Gothic once. https://www.allmusic.com/album/beneath-the-eyrie-mw0003284691
Yeah the whole “gothic” thing is really annoying. I don’t even know what that means. Cause the album cover is black? Because it was recorded in a church converted into a recording studio? Not a gothic church either btw? Those are pretty common. There’s one down the street from me. Because there are songs about death? Aren’t like a good 1/3 of all songs ever about death? At least? A song about a witch? What’s “gothic” about that?
I don’t know. It’s a tiresome adjective. Part of the marketing I guess.
I had a bad reaction to your public hobby writings. |
| The Maharal |
Posted - 09/29/2019 : 10:56:17
Not sure if the All Music Guide review was posted. It's a nice review and refreshingly doesn't use the word Gothic once. https://www.allmusic.com/album/beneath-the-eyrie-mw0003284691 |
| The Maharal |
Posted - 09/29/2019 : 10:43:52
If you could combine the two albums into one reasonably-timed collection what would you include? I'd have something like this, probably a few flow issues as I have thrown it together without too much thought in the ordering.
In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain
On Graveyard Hill
Chapel Hill
Caught In A Dream
Catfish Kate
This Is My Fate
Silver Bullet
St. Nazaire
Hey, Debussy
How I Learned To Earn Rewards
I Just Can't Break It To You
Bird of Prey
Daniel Boone
Death Horizon
I'm tempted to shunt On Graveyard Hill as for me the chorus is pretty weak but it's a rare fast-paced song. Would also cut a few seconds off Debussy.
I caught myself singing Caught In A Dream on the street earlier. It's got a lovely melody and I'm just realising the end of it echoes No 13 Baby a little. |
| marcusb |
Posted - 09/29/2019 : 05:46:35
I like it but I don't think I like it better than WIMM or DITS.
-Marcus |
| pot |
Posted - 09/28/2019 : 10:31:04
quote:
Originally posted by Fitzy
The bridge on Daniel Boon makes it a better song than Where Is My Mind or Dog in the Sand.
It's there so it can get across the water. |
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