Brian Fallon - Sleepwalkers (February 9, 2018) Album • Page 22

I gotta say, I kind of love the EP on its own. All three of those songs fit so well together. On Painkillers, I guess you could place it around Honey Magnolia?

 

I've said this before, but I would've taken it over Mojo Hand any day. I don't dislike Mojo Hand, but Georgia is by far a better song.

 

I leave that to the experts, I'm not the guy who really focuses on album flow, etc.

Do you not think it works back to back with WDIWWWY ??? Is that much different from Mae/National Anthem being 2 slow ones to close out Handwritten?

I think She Loves You is far superior to WDIWWWY personally

 

I love Mojo Hand, I wouldn't dump ANYTHING off Painkillers but gun to my head, I would get rid of Steve McQueen or Honey Magnolia which I'm aware would not be popular choices.

 

i'm sure anyone ranking in here is open to/expecting it to change greatly. it's just fun to literally place where it landed against your expectations.

 

Get Hurt = The ‘59 Sound
Elsie
Handwritten
Painkillers
Señor and the Queen
American Slang
Sink or Swim

 

I haven't heard it yet but here are my ever-changing rankings beforehand

'59 Sound (by a hair)
American Slang
Handwritten
Painkillers
Sink or Swim
Get Hurt
Elsie

 

Fight me.

 

If I'm taking one song off every album: Red in the Morning, Patient Ferris Wheel, Queen of Lower Chelsea, Desire, Red Violins, Mojo Hand.

 

So Sleepwalkers the song....


FUCK YEAH I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED A SONG LIKE THAT

 

Can anyone make out the first line of the outro to Sleepwalkers? Right after the last "where you and I go walking in our sleep"...been bugging me lol, I have no idea what he says.

 

I'll have to try it out. I've swapped out "Queen of Lower Chelsea" for She Loves You, and I thought it still flowed well, especially as a Side A/Side B scenario where She Loves You closes Side A then you flip it over and "Orphans" opens side B.

If you put She Loves You back to back with WDIWWWY, that song would have to go 2nd to last and She Loves You would have to close the album imo much like the Mae/National Anthem pairing.

 

Oh my god, not Red Violins please.

 

Fixed it for you

 

That is such a fantastic little EP, it's actually what I had Brian sign when I met him. But the thought of Butch's production on "Georgia" is drool-worthy.

 

American Slang is a damn masterpiece. BUT it is a very short album, and I think it definitely had room for 3 minutes and 38 seconds more gloriousness. I plop She Loves You right after Spirit of Jazz before the closer. I actually prefer She Loves You to WDIWWWY, but do appreciate the latter as a closer.

The thought of a fully Butch Walker-produced version of Georgia still brings a tear to my eye, and I think it would have gone a long way towards bringing Painkillers from 'just' a fantastic album up towards his upper tier works for me. I am a fellow Mojo Hand lover, but I can recognize that it is stylistically the outlier there. That doesn't bother me though because it's so damn good, and I personally don't think it is *that* far out from what he normally does. I can't swap Mojo Hand out for anything, and with Painkillers I try to respect what Brian was going for with the album. If I'm playing around with it I'd honestly swap the album version of Long Drives out for Georgia and replace Steve McQueen with Low Love. Low Love is just too damn good and as more time has passed since the album dropped I like the Painkillers version of Long Drives less and less and find myself going back to the MATZ version. The Painkillers arrangement of Smoke is just the song to me now, and I never really saw a difference between the versions of Red Lights.

 

Demo-titus killed me with Painkillers. I already knew 6 of the 12 songs before I ever heard the album. And, i get that he released a bunch from this one too, but there was something nice about them being mostly the beginning and the end and letting the middle be all uncharted territory for me.

 

Any songs that sound like the chorus of Stay Vicious?

 

I’ve had around 5 listens to the album. It’s awesome and should be the best album by some artists, but will never crack top 3 for Brian which speaks so much to how great he is.

Like Painkillers, it’s sad this has a wintery cold release date as I just want this on a warm day, afternoon, and night.

Anyways, top 3 songs in this moment are Sleepwalkers, Little Nightmares, and Come Wander With Me. I’m excited for this to change each day!

 

This has taken me years to finally settle on, but my version of Get Hurt looks like this:

1. Stay Vicious
2. 1,000 Years
3. Get Hurt
4. Selected Poems
5. Helter Skeleton
6. Underneath The Ground
7. Sweet Morphine
8. Rollin and Tumblin
9. Red Violins
10. Ain't That A Shame
11. Dark Places
12. Have Mercy

I've always had these 12 songs as my version of the album, but I've played around with the order for a long time. My one regret is I do really love having Rollin and Tumblin starting off Side B, but I just couldn't make it work.

I strongly dislike the song Stray Paper, and I love the way that Get Hurt flows into the gentle beginning of Selected Poems before the main part of the song smashes in. Sweet Morphine is one of my favorite songs from this entire era. Break Your Heart has never done anything for me at all. I don't like to bash it because I know a lot of other people really love it a lot. Dark Places is a fantastic song but it never felt like the closer to me. Definitely the emotional climax where everything comes to a head, but then I love Have Mercy as the gentle denouement.

 

"We Did It When We Were Young" might be my favorite "closer" in the sense that it so perfectly wraps up the themes of that album. I think the period of American Slang - Elsie is Brian's best lyrically. I mean:

"There are no reasons to believe,
I buried my faith in another plot.
Where your heart and your claws
Will not find.
And I don't feel you or recall,
I'll put your bones out in the yard
for someone else to be called and caught by."

After Elsie he moved on to a more simple, direct writing style (a lot of Get Hurt lyrics are actually more obscure/poetic though, one of the reasons I prefer it over Handwritten). He's really mastered that style on Sleepwalkers. But AS/Elsie was the sweet spot for me.

 

Handwritten is really interesting because it seems like on some songs he made a conscious decision to make his lyrics a little more universal and less specific - for example, the reworking of Biloxi Parish where you lose the stuff about Asbury Park and replace it with the stuff about heroes and ghosts - yet elsewhere on the album on Keepsake he tackles being abandoned by his father head-on with some really specific and personal lyrics.

 

Surprised how much you guys love Have mercy. It’s cool, but still feels like an unfinished b-side to me.

 

I'm surprised any of the Get Hurt b-sides get as much love as they do. That's my favorite one, and I'd probably put it on the album, but it's not an all-timer or anything.

 

I liked it from the onset, but hearing it live with Chelsea Hotel No. 2 tagged on to it is what took it to the next level for me.