Quote Originally Posted by r_z View Post
Yeah, Trent and Atticus know what they're doing, no doubt. It's just... the whole thing kind of sounds posed to me. Posed and bloated. I think I see, what they were trying to do. But, ultimately, the album feels like it's pregnant with a meaning that's not there. It's too cliché and generic... like: "the more we change..." wait for it... "everything stays the same". Come on, man.
It wouldn't bother me, weren't it for the seriousness, which lies underneath it all (no pun intended). Trent's like the Chris Nolan of rock music (or one of many): Technically, it can't get any better, but artistically it feels all over the place, bloated and takes itself waaaay too seriously. Like.. god damn you, have some fun already!
Maybe that's why I liked The Slip so much. Because it just is. Not for the sake of proving a point or being the next big artistic statement.
I think that's a fair comparison in a few ways. I think culturally, we've sort of hit the zietgeist of wanting things to be fun and looser again -- it comes and goes in cycles. and HTDA is most definitely not fun or loose (at least, this album)... this is a profoundly self-serious album lyrically. (Though the 'lyrics' to "The Loop Closes" I find so silly I must assume they were playful(?).)

But I think musically there's quite a bit of playfulness going on; I find it hard not to listen to "And The Sky Began to Scream" without feeling a sort of rush of aural discovery that they probably had when they made the track... They set out to capture some sort of Videodrome-vibe and I think on certain songs they knocked it right out of the park.

So, I get what you're saying. I guess I've really stopped expecting much of lyrics generally -- which makes it all the more awesome when some lyrics come around that blow me away (QOTSA, for example).