I totally lost interest in this album and haven't listened to it at least a week now. I am disappointed by the lack of depth on the lyrics and musical ideas. I am totally left in disbelief that this should be the result of two years work in the studio and appears to me as nothing short of a musical bankruptcy. Apart from My Bacon Roll I only really like Sky And Water which reflects the MK music that I used to love. All other songs wear the stamp of dullness and lack of creativity, disguised by a very cool sounding landscape of Guyisms but that cannot rescue it.
Sorry don't want to spoil the fun and I am off again already. I can imagine that many fans WANT to like it. No problem with that. I was prepared to love it but I can't. The Matchstick Man post of jbaent and the comparison with a masterpiece like Heart Of Oak brought me back dir a minute. Greetings!
LE
LE, I kind or warn you about this long ago when I told you that this new record has been recorded during the breaks between the works for the musical... I remember telling that probably MK put more of his creativity in the musical, that is something new, a challenge, something he never done before, than into the record.
When the iswc titles appeared here I pointed that it was rare that the numbers of the tracks were not consecutive, and in some cases, some too far from others, and it might means (not necessarily, but likely...) that some of them were songs that didn't make it in previous recording sessions for previous albums. I asked Guy once if the new record was made of new songs or from unfinished or not released before and he answered me something like "a bit of everything".
However, I like this record much more than Tracker, for example, as I find very interesting things musically, like the synths, the brass, the female vocals, the great amount and variaity of percussion over the record, diversity of styles etc etc
Lyrically is not so great as other records, but musically to me is very very interesting and I truly hope he follows this steps for the future, doing interesting and new kind of things he never done before.