Frownland

It's not even about that, I just think it's an unnecessary and fascist rule. Here's a ****in review, don't banish me from your thread oh master Trollheart. I fully intend on participating, but it really is a stupid rule dude.

I think we can all agree that Buy the Ticket Take the Ride has a sweet album cover. The opening track was some really solid but extremely derivative shoegaze, as mentioned by pretty much everyone else here. The guitar work is pretty cool and manages to stay interesting, but I’ve never been a fan of the half asleep dreamy vocals in shoegaze. Grass starts off with some more interesting drums, but the song itself is actually not that interesting. While the female singer’s voice is standard shoegazey and tolerable, I really don’t like the male vocals tbh. Outside is alright as a song but has some cool guitar tones. Neat little outro. I’m kind of wanting to bail on this album because like I said it’s really solid shoegaze, but I’ve heard good shoegaze before and I’m a little over the genre. When Gone Without Feeling comes on, I’m just wishing that these guys would open up a little bit more because I can tell that they have it in them and can probably pull it off well. Ugh, those male vocals again. The Greatest Fall was a good track, I like the doowoppy element of it and it sounds like it was taken straight out of a David Lynch film. This is the first track I can see myself coming back to. What’s Forsaken has neat guitar delay stuff going on in the beginning and is pretty cool along with the drums. The vocals feel a little unnecessary on this track though, it could be a jammy instrumental and be excellent, although later on in the song they land on some great harmonies. All that I can see about All That We Can See is that it’s a boring ass filler song. Sweet Come Down is alright with the jangly, Western soundtrack inspired acoustic guitar, but the length of the song makes it a little bearable. Burn and Fade gives me a nice segue for some spam because it’s filler and Mondo and mine’s metal act Noosefiller is going to be dropping an excellent industrial/avant-garde/black metal record that’s really worth checking out. This song is just kind of there and I want it to end so that I can listen to more interesting music. Rise is some regular ole shoegaze, who saw that coming? I like the delay setting on this one, but it is a little long. Neat closing drone though.

Final thoughts: Good shoegaze for sure. Thing is that I’ve heard a lot of shoegaze and I felt like the album got a little redundant towards the end. I don’t see myself listening to this again. Maybe if it were an EP or if I had heard it when I was initially discovering shoegaze in high school I would like it more, but this is the reality we’re stuck with. I hear a lot about their second album, how does it compare to this? I might give it a shot if it gets past some of the problems I mentioned here. Overall I’d give the album a 5/10.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.