I didn't listen to it the last three weeks or so, only skipping to some single songs that I wish to hear, most of the time the same ones, like
I Used To Could, Go, Love, Miss You Blues or Don't Forget Your Hat and Occupation Blues. Sometimes also
Redbud Tree. The rest is just not working
as an album, sorry to say. I wondered if anyone would come up with a thread like this and I had plans to do so myself, so thanks!
I was looking very much forward to
Haul Away and
Privateering as I loved the live versions but think that both album versions are weaker than what we heard last year, so they are also skipped at the moment. So there are around 5, 6 songs that I return to regularly, not more.
What strikes me most that this album is the one with the least interesting lyrics ever. There is not even a single song that I wish to dug into deeper... I used to do so with every single MK release so far, but all those blues songs and all the rest appear to me that they just rhyme, not more. I mean
"DMC cannonball going like train, all down the 40 and the driving rain..." The only lyrics I'd like to get worked out more (by AMITers) are
Follow The Ribbon, I would love to know what's it about, and who or what was the inspiration from
Miss You Blues... Of course I think
Dream of The Drowned Submariner is a masterpiece, but the lyrics say nothing to me. Why on earth should someone write a song about one single seaman that dies in a submarine, it is not... allegorial for nothing, that soldier in the field of Brothers In Arms was... as an example it is a too exotic setting...
(The Scaffolder's Wife for example was perfectly well chosen as an archetype for what was the message of the song, even the "frozen starving beggar band" in that other song... but someone lying in a submarine and dreaming of his daughter is too isolated, too etraordinary or too artistic for me. Or to arty?) Some appear as sketches, not more. Not enough to be a song in my opinion. (Eat, work, eat, work and sleep, the rest of the lyrics are crap, apart from the dog...
)
For me that's new, because the lyrics always where the most integral part of the package, more important sometimes than which guitar or which guitar sound was exactly used...
Just remember all those stories around
Border Reiver, or
So Far From The Clyde, how long it took us to recognize the Indian ship thing, or the story with his uncle on
Piper, or the story with the
Car that was the one.... On Privateering, only the relation to Sonny Liston comes to mind (again).
Kingdom of Gold leaves me cold totally, the lyrics... most of the stuff is really ... insignificant, or petty. Sounds hard - well, I love most of the music, and the way MK SINGS this petty stuff is still great.... his voice and phrasing and stuff... but hmmmm... maybe you just cannot have it all. I can live with it perfectly well, I am into a classic piano recording of Franz Schubert music at the moment, played by Olga Scheps, a young Russian pianist which I will see live in Hamburg at the end of October... her playing gives me goosebumps every single time, never thought that you can recognize so much personality in just playing piano, but I am relatively new to this subject, so Dannyjunior for example will be able to elaborate a little more on this subject.. so Mark has left the building for the moment anyhow...
but he will return I am sure...
Sorry long post. I know you can also name other songs from the album and proove the opposite of my point of view, but it is just my opinion. No way I wish to convince anyone, just utter!
Looking forward Guitar Stories very much!
LE
