Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
What the hell is this crap? Where did the keyboards go? What's with the shit sounding drums and angular guitar jangle rattling all over the place? These guys are lucky to be such masters of the economically crafted pop Long Player because I can imagine more than 10 songs of this ugliness getting a bit tedious. Don't get me wrong, Phoenix's decision to drop rock bombs where there were none before is an interesting one, especially when combined with the continued refinement of their now trusty aesthetic, which is as breezy, lightweight (in a good way), and classic soft pop groping as ever. This alone makes the INBLT songs stand out in the post-Strokes/Franz dark ages during which they were released but does not change the fact that tinniness in the sonics department makes it hard to overlook more than a few of these songs' respective failures to sport a verse/chorus combination as killer as the one in "Long Distance Call." That's not to say that every track here doesn't have at least something going for it, but I still tune out less than halfway through the thing. It sounds like shit and tracks eight and nine are unnecessarily long enough to be on the Julian Casablancas solo album. Pretty lazy review as per usual, but I can't say that this album really does much for me as the sort of thing whose abundance of solid hooks and presentation of said hooks make want to listen to it ever.
Rating: Still a B+. Great band.
Download Link: Flobots - "Handlebars
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