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sleepinginzeal
whereas the sprawl of UTBUTS made it all but perfect, this one really is a little too much of a grab bag. it's all great material but "bulldog skin" and "mute superstar" really don't fit..."portable men's society" is also debatable. plus UTBUTS has this implausibly graceful flow (like most of their earlier homebrew records did), but you really feel the discontinuity on mag. in the opening run it feels like the album's stopping and starting again every two songs or so. it's a shame, because at 21 songs and 45 minutes, you definitely could've whittled it down and reordered it for 30 or 35 minutes of perfection...and the orphaned tracks could've made for a nice EP on their own
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Odunc2005
it feels dismissive to say this, but this album probably just shouldn't exist. the cleanly-produced rockers could've made a cool EP showcasing their transition into this sound, and the rest of the tracks could have been another EP or even could have been saved for Suitcase. there's some great songs here but it really does feel like a mess of tracks that were scrambled together, and not in a charming way
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sleepinginzeal
i’m glad we have an album of this era of the band because it was so distinct and so brief, but yeah, bob set up the GBV name for a “they were way better before” narrative by having this (compelling) mess be their first/only statement piece. if they had trimmed it to a tight half hour and put the rest on oddball EPs (like any other classic era year) i think there’s a strong chance there could have been a critical consensus that they were “back and better than ever” or whatever. interesting to think how things might’ve turned out differently if so
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sleepinginzeal
THAT BEING SAID…”learning to hunt” through “the colossus crawls west” might very well be the best six track run bob ever pulled together. it’s stunning. could maybe be their best release if that had been its own EP
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sleepinginzeal
easily their coolest cover art, and one of their coolest sounds...some of the details aren't all the way there but it's very nearly a masterpiece
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MohammadWDI
I used to HATE this album, mostly because it wasn't Alien Lanes or Bee Thousand. Thankfully, I grew out of that mindset, because this album rocks.
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