Baroness - Yellow & Green

[Alfred]

Yellow Theme
Take My Bones Away
March to the Sea
Little Things
Twinkler
Cocainium
Back Where I Belong
Sea Lungs
Eula



Green Theme
Board Up the House
Mtns. (The Crown & Anchor)
Foolsong
Collapse
Psalms Alive
Stretchmarker
The Line Between
If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry

[Alfred]

The leak is missing track 3 of Green, but I'll be listening to what has leaked so far tonight.

[RVCA]

You should put the Green cover at the bottom of that first post

[Alfred]

Good call. It is a bit more appealing, I must say.

[Surell]

Two albums at once? Too. Damn. Much Baroness

[Janszoon]

Originally Posted by Alfred

Good call. It is a bit more appealing, I must say.

Yes. I usually like John Baizley's artwork a lot, but I'm not really a fan of the woman with the birthday cake hat on the cover of Yellow.

[Paedantic Basterd]

The artwork is a bit of a letdown compared to Red and Blue.

[Alfred]

I agree, though I think it's just that sperm-looking background that makes it fall flat (again with his fertility theme). Had he stuck more sea creatures and flowers, and perhaps made his colours brighter, it would look a lot better.

[RVCA]

copying my review from RYM

As a total Baroness fanboy, it pains me to do this, but after a dozen listens I'm dropping the 3-star-bomb.

It's an okay double album-- overproduced in places (the autotune on "Mtns" is just unforgivable) and plagued with tedious arena rock ("The Line Between" being the worst offender, "Take My Bones Away" another example), but nothing is quite so bad as Baizley's lack of mid-ranged alt-rock vocal ability.

He annoyed me on their EPs with his indecipherable and unrefined bellowing, and I thought he'd realized his limitations when Red and Blue saw a drastic decrease in both the intensity and frequency of his vocals, but then he went and plastered Y&G. The lyrics are interesting enough (though sometimes irritating-- "Little Things") but there are too many cringe-inducing moments (the crooning on "Foolsong") that make me wonder if all the other band members were too big-a pushovers to say "Hey man, this sounds kinda bad. Maybe we should stick to being a mostly-instrumental group, it worked pretty well on Red and Blue."

The album does have some redeeming qualities though. "Strechmarker" is a fantastic, atmospheric, acoustic interlude, similar to the intros/interludes found on prior albums. "Eula" and "March to the Sea" are as good as any Baroness, and the theme tracks flow nicely throughout and mesh well with the closer "If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry".

I've read a number of interviews with Baizley regarding this album, and while I can appreciate his frankness in wanting to progress as an artist regardless of what he thinks (or his critics think) his audience wants, I think he's shown us that the group has either lost their chemistry with the lineup changes, or doesn't have the knack for this type of music-- or both.

[Zer0]

To me this album felt a bit all over the place and unfocused, and that's often a trapdoor that a lot of double albums fall into. I enjoyed Green a bit more than Yellow as it had more interesting songs but overall this lacks the intensity of their previous stuff. However I feel that it's probably an album that will take more than a couple of listens to get into so I will let it sit with me for a bit.