Brian Fallon - Sleepwalkers (February 9, 2018) Album • Page 19

Brian's writing style is so brilliantly simple. I love it.

 

Watson is so Handwritten.

 

That is one of the best Brian interviews, he's really open.

 

This album is great.

 

Ted Hutt gets Brian Fallon.

 

Random thoughts:

-Some references I caught: Obviously Etta James's "At Last"; "Like a Rolling Stone" in the chorus of Her Majesty's Service; the poem "A Season in Hell" in Neptune (Fallon's talked about it in interviews before); "Wild Horses" in Little Nightmares.

-The only thing I have in the way of criticism is that there are a few lyrics that veer juuuust too far into melodrama for me. Don't love the "we can cry together through the bad dreams" part of Little Nightmares for example. A minor complaint though, as there only a couple moments where they irk me.

-"Etta James" and "Watson" are likely in my top 10-15 Fallon/TGA songs ever.

-I think my least favorite is "Proof of Life" but only because I feel like thematically it's kinda running through the same territory as "See You On the Other Side". Like it doesn't jump out as me as "essential". But I certainly won't skip it and the first verse is actually a favorite.

-The album is extremely cohesive lyrically. We already know he can write the heartbreak songs, but the perspective he has on this album is different and interesting. Like it's what happens when the wreck of a guy from "Get Hurt" moves on and finds love again -- happy, but not without his fears and insecurities as a result of his past. Kinda hard to describe but I really feel like he nails that theme throughout the album, in a variety of ways.

 

Little Nightmares has a weird very hard to hear backing vocal in the bridge. Honestly sounds like someone counting the beats.

 

The intro on Come Wander With Me sounds exactly like If Your Prayers Don't Get To Heaven. Really good song, but that it really hard to get past, especially since they're track 1 and 3.

But I really do enjoy the album. Seems a lot deeper than Painkillers and I feel like there's a lot more to wrap my head around.

 

Waiting until Friday but very excited to read all the great reviews. When your favorite band/singer/songwriter has a great new album out, life is nothing but good.

The first listen to new TGA/BF is always special, but I also love when you get to the 5th, 6th, 7th listen and can start to sing along almost just as much, when the songs really click for the listener and you find new parts that are special.

 

Great article, thank you for sharing. It bums me out that people don't like Get Hurt, and that those people have made him question the validity of it. It's the worst of the 5 albums, most think, maybe, so what? Compared to some masterpieces!!

That record has some GREAT songs on it and I think it's fantastic overall. It's my 5th favorite but by a very slim margin. I love it.

I wonder how much "we have nothing more to say as a band" is just his way of saying "I can't top '59 Sound so I'm not going to try". I get the vibe from the article (and others) that them breaking up had a lot more to do with Get Hurt's reviews than it did with "not having anything more to say". I think it made him question himself.

Lastly, I think it's a little bit of revisionist history (in the other recently posted article) where he blames the record companies and the machine for trying to make them huge and causing stress and making it less fun. He was ON RECORD, over and over again, about having the same ambitions. "We want to play arenas", I heard/read him saying that multiple times. Maybe he changed his mind, and that was a hard grind, but I don't think that's all on "the machine" in terms of blame.

 

I went back and listened to Get Hurt today for the first time in a long time. There are some incredible songs on it, but it is wildly uneven and never quite comes together for me. Plus, I will never forgive them for writing a song as good as Have Mercy and not including it on the album proper. Especially when it is infinitely superior to some of the tracks that did make the cut. I've spent a long time fiddling around with my version of that album and I've come up with mine, but I don't think the album works nearly as good as some of their other efforts as released.

That article / interview makes me wildly curious as to what a Brendan O'Brien produced Get Hurt would even sound like, or what it would sound like if Brian had been able to get it to the point where he felt it was "finished".

 

The beginning of "Etta James" sounds a lot like the Horrible Crowes' cover of "Teenage Dream." Maybe that's just me.

 

I agree with what someone said earlier in the thread where Sleepwalkers sounds a lot like a sequel to / continuation of Elsie much more so than Painkillers. I hear a lot of Gaslight in it at parts and I also hear a lot of Horrible Crowes. This is such a solid album.

 

The ending to Etta James has yet to not give me chills. "At last....at last..."

 

Fuck yeah this album is great. It's got a heartbeat to it that pulses through every song. The title track is especially my favorite, love those horns and how it sways.

 

I've listened to this album 5 times since last night. It far exceeded my great expectations.

 

damn, Brian straight up referencing the P4K review and how much it affected him negatively. i mean, we all knew that but i dont think ive ever seen him specifically mention that particular review. im glad hes doing better in life and im really thankful that he continues to put out some damn fine music.

 

I really love how themes, phrases, and specific words pop up in Brian’s music. I really have loved everything he’s done, and Sleepwalkers feels far more musically cohesive than Painkillers.

 

I mean, this quote from the Get Hurt review is just egregious. How someone can draw THAT from that lyric and then just throw it out there in a published review is beyond me. The only thing that review accomplished for me is that it let me know Ian Cohen is probably the last dude I'd ever want to hang out with.

Also:

Uh no dude it's pretty clear what the lyric is. Don't just say that the lyric might be "feel me" because it supports the weird character assassination you're writing.

/rant over

 

Yeah. Wow. What a shitty review. I didn't realize it got that personal against him. Getting those things out of that lyric is ridiculous. The reviews I read at the time were more about the music not being as good as their other albums. That reads like Brian hit that guy's dog with his car on purpose or something. Weird. I'm surprised they published that.

 

Totally back you on the “Have Mercy” bit. In the context of slower songs on that record, there’s no way “Break Your Heart” should’ve made it on to that record instead of Have Mercy. Couple that song woth “Dark Places? Feels for days.

 

Break Your Heart is beautiful and for an album titled Get Hurt, what a perfect acoustic song. I love Have Mercy. It’s has a very different feel than Break your Heart and Underneath The Ground and could have been on the record too.

 

I honestly believe that Have Mercy is a good enough song that, if it isn't fitting into the track list the way things are, you rearrange the entire thing to make it fit somewhere.

Break Your Heart never really did anything for me. I don't actively dislike it as I do other songs from the album, but I don't think it's anywhere near as good as some of their obscure, slower, non-album tracks like Hold You Up, Misery or Teenage Rebellion.

 

Have Mercy -> Rollin' and Tumblin is how that album should've started.

 

I normally wouldn't do this right after a record but I can't see this changing much:
1) 59 Sound
2) Elsie
3) American Slang
4) Sleepwalkers
5) Painkillers
6) Get Hurt
7) Sink or Swim
8) Handwritten

59 Sound and Elsie are really two sides of a coin for me, can't rank one over the other. Ask me in July I'll say 59 Sound, ask me during a crippling winter hangover and I'll say Elsie. But Sleepwalkers fits right into that top four, and there's a bit of a gap between 4 and 5.