Relient K - Air For Free Album • Page 11

I love Five Score and FANSD so much.

 

yeah FANSD is the best

 

honestly I don't either but I guess I would rather stop and pick up with it later if I have to then cut ti down. I get what you are saying though

 

Loving it upon first listen, and know it will continue to grow on me more and more.

 

I'm the same. I remember it didn't do much for me, but that was like 7 years ago (!) so maybe I need to revisit it. I still listen to Mmmhmm and Five Score . . . fairly often though.

 

I really like Mmhmm but that's the only one I've ever really consistently listened to.

 

Just one listen in and this belongs in the company of MMHMM, FANSD, and Five Score. So happy about this record. I actually think that musically and melodically this might be the best thing they've done and "Local Construction" is easily one of my favorite songs I've ever heard from the band. If there's one caveat, it's that it can be a little ambitious for its own good and doesn't have the perfect flow of an MMHMM or FANSD so not sure it'll live up to those for me. But it's ridiculously good.

Someone mentioned The Dear Hunter in another thread which I thought sounded bizarre. But holy cow, I get so many Dear Hunter vibes from a lot of songs on this record. And I love it.

 

I've never listened go CL why is it considered so bad? Is it because it's poppier?

 

One listen in but holy moly, hearing Relient K make good music again puts the biggest smile on my face. "Flower" is everything I love about this band.

 

No, it's just straight up bad songwriting.

 

I haven't listened to this yet, but I'm glad Look on Up isn't on it. I did not like that song.

 

No, I generally love when bands go poppier but that album is flat out bad.

 

Ahhh ok. Looking on Wikipedia it's saying there were cowriters? I'm guessing that didn't help, probably didn't mix well. Cowriters aren't a bad thing per se but sometimes they can bring an album down if it's the wrong people (Raditude for example)

I guess I'll listen to CL and see if maybe I'm the weirdo that likes it

 

Since I don't like it, I'm sure you will! Haha.

 

They do take on a good bit of influence from mainstream pop but also the lyrics and melodies took a huge dip in quality, especially from FANSD. I think Five Score and this new album have a lot of pop in them but it's done much, much better than CL.

 

Is the production on this album super weird or is it just the stream quality?

 

Yeah, there were a lot of cowrites which I think diluted Matt's songwriting a little and made it less personal/interesting. I still think there's some fun pop songs on there and don't hate it like a lot of people do but it's definitely significantly worse than the three that came before it and this new one.

 

weird in what way? From what I can tell it seems real nice to me.

 

Really really bass heavy, I'm finding it hard to listen to

 

I'm not hearing that at all honestly.

 

Weird, I dunno. Maybe I'll wait for it to hit Apple Music? I really don't want to... in all honesty, the production I'm hearing right off the bat reminds me of Young New England. Disclaimer: I have zero technical knowledge about production.

 

The bad songwriting has nothing to do with there being co-writers on Collapsible Lung. It had everything to do with that album being a mess and having no clue what it wanted to be. It would transition *seamlessly* from a shameless Train/Bruno Mars ripoff like Can't Complain, to a really really awful Michael Buble song like Disaster and a flat, hookless PTL. There is just no consistency to that album at all. And the lyrics are laughably bad from what I consider to be one of the most consistently clever writers out there (ex. "Sweeping up the seconds that tick off the clock, and saving them for later when I'm too ticked to talk" which is one of his best).

"Good Time" is one of the best songs he has ever written, and that was co-written with Adam Young, so like, the co-writing isn't the problem. It's the ideas.

 

Runnin' is AWESOME

 

It is definitely the stream quality. Very poor treble mix on Pandora streams usually and since it's such a low bitrate quality (160 kbps usually) the cymbals and the drums are inevitably going to sound really tinny and flat. And then if you're listening to the leak, the transcode up to 320 certainly didn't help matters either. It'll sound better surely when the album is officially released.

 

That's good to hear. I did try the leak last night and it sounded awful, so I decided I'd wait for the stream...but that's no good.