New Day Rising
We’ve had issues with production before. We ask why Playboi Carti has no low-end every time we listen. But this album is different-it sounds like it was recorded by a potato with no vocal input. It hurts, but we need to start with one of the main offenders- 59 Times The Pain.
59 has one of my favorite hooks on the entire album. The two I catch myself singing most often is probably this and Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill. The version that I sing in my head, though? It doesn’t exist on this album. This version is a MESS.
It’s an absolute disaster. I remember showing it to a friend and they asked “are those words or effects?”. Because you can’t hear anything! The guitars are shoved together and the vocals are hidden behind this curtain of crappy recording, peeking out every once in a while.
That being said, there are a ton of highlights! If you mixed this album properly (you JUST made Zen Arcade, you know what a good mix sounds like, do your damn jobs) then it’s a top 50-100, real competitor to The Replacements album. New Day Rising is good, the follow-up stretch of Grant songs is great. I mean Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill, I Apologize, If I Told You, Celebrated Summer- if you prefer the lead singer, congrats on being the guy who thinks college basketball is better than the NBA.
You can pick anything from the second half as your “hidden gem”- the New York Dolls-esque Terms Of Psychic Warfare (it sounds like Roadrunner mixed with laying the roots for Blink-182), my hate/love 59 Times The Pain, the odd little psych-punk Powerline. I’d probably pick Books About UFOs, because it’s got that punk guitar mixed with a piano/vocal combo that sounds like 69 Love Songs. 90s pop-punk fans would say I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About.
Honestly, it’ll still like a top 180 level album. I still really enjoy it for all that I hate about the production, and it’s in that elite class of underground indie like Replacements/GBV/Built To Spill to me. It’d be like a 4.5 if the production was great, but I think I have it at 3.8/5? That feels right, it’s not really a true 4. The production is bad, and the last three songs can all go- how many times do you NEED 15 songs? Cmon, 8-12, how have we not learned this by now.
3.8/5