The Wonder Years - Sister Cities (April 6, 2018) Album • Page 144

There is so much to love about this album but I just want to reiterate that It Must Get Lonely is a great song and is very much so the direction I thought they’d take after “There, There”

 

Flowers is easily my favorite. What a beaut.

 

@leerkat going ham on the annotations on genius. cant wait to read more of those


this album is everything i wanted it to be and then some. now that i have the lyrics im going to add this album to my long ass TWY Odyssey post which I'll post over here once its done for those that want to read it

 

Thank you I try

 

Transit was never good

 

Their producer bullied me because I said his vocal production is bad

 

mike you were excited about this band in 2011 don't say you never liked them

 

i paid them money for something (admittedly very dumb on my part) and they never came through and i had to wait a year and a half to get paid back and tim acted like a jackass when they eventually did

 

Yeah Transit was a band that really showed their true colors alarmingly quickly once it started to come out. I feel like I never hear anything good about those guys, ever. And I was all about them back in 2011 just like I imagine most people were. Just bad news all around.

 

I was, but listening to L&F, like, three or four years later I realized it didn't hold up well at all

 

Whenever I talk about how much I hate this band I mention that since said producer is a member’s Brother and basically a member of that band imo

 

Reading the Upset article and it's cool that the idea for the album came while on tour with Shikari.

 

The “line in the sand” part of Pyramids makes a lot more sense considering all the references to the ocean on this album.

 

I remember being super excited for that Shikari tour because I was really into Shikari back then, mostly because they were the only band who would come to Paris not only once every year, but sometimes even twice. Came up to the UK do the two Scottish dates. It's pretty cool because it was that tour ended up making TWY so important to me. Also I just remember Kennedy's puzzled reaction Shikari's music and crowds on instagram hahaha.

 

Agreed. Just seeing this post shot the title track into my head and I'm pretty sure it's not leaving for the rest of the day.

 

Yeah, I find it interesting that he's taken so much thematic interest on the ocean, especially since previously he's been very land-centred. I don't think he even mentions a river once in TWY's lyrics safe from implying the Delaware in My Geraldine, which is odd for someone who writes about landscape so much. I guess it started on NCTH because there's a few ocean references in Thanks For The Ride and You In January and whatnot. And the lake in Bluest Things. I'm probably forgetting some. But it's interesting.

 

The ocean-swallows-NYC imagery on that last Aaron West EP comes to mind too.

 

I'm just waiting for them to drop the stream and listening to NCTH. The Bluest Things on Earth is super good.

 

I said this on twitter, but I Wanted So Badly To Be Brave is a stealthy top 5 TWY song.

 

My opinion on NCTH:

Definitely the first time I wasn't head over heels about a TWY album and definitely when I started losing a slight interest in them between not liking the album and not enjoying seeing them live as much as I used to

I do like the album and I think it has some really good songs. Cigarettes & Saints & Cardinals are definitely two of their all time best. I think I Don't Like Who I Was Then is a perfect ode to their old song while incorporating something new as well and it's also one of my favorite TWY tracks.

It also has a lot of good songs. Bluest Things on Earth, A Song For Ernest Hemingway, Stained Glass Ceilings, I Wanted So Badly To Be Brave & You In January are all quality tracks. I enjoy Thanks For The Ride as well although I would say it's a notch down from the others listed.

I still really don't like Patsy Cline. I think they tried executing something that didn't work out well. Sister Cities seems to have the sound they were trying to go for here but it's done way better and sounds great. I think Palm Reader is really boring and not a fan of it at all. And I really dislike the title track

Overall I think it's a good album but it seems like this one really nails what they're trying to go for now and I'm glad they figured it out.

I see the 10 year weekend (where they played all 3 albums and a bunch of old stuff) as the end of a chapter I had with this band where they were my all time favorite and I used to drive everywhere to see them and spend a ton of money on preorders and merch at shows, and get more excited than anything to hear new material and see them etc.

I will always have a strong connection with them and I hope with the new album and upcoming shows I can get as excited about them as I used to get

 

rundown of NCTH
cardinals - dope
patsy cline - fine, transitions are weird, not particularly catchy
I don't like - awesome, first time the prod really bothers me
cigarrettes - best song, top tier TWY
bluest - weird first minute, great song after that. sloppy transitions in this one too
ernest hemingway - pretty great
thanks for the ride - repetitive, lazy sounding guitar lead. kind of boring honestly.
stained - decent, ruined by JAB, who I'm usually a fan of.
I wanted so badly - dig it a lot, still the transitions from verse to chorus throw me off a little
you in jan - sweet love song, it's just fine.
palm reader - basically what they are doing well on sister cities they tried to do here and it didn't work.
NCTH - kind of anticlimactic but fine i guess.

so, thats about 7 songs I like? and those 7 songs are brought down by the strangest production choices I've heard this side of Letlive's TBB.

 

I promise I wrote my response before I read yours and we have said a lot of the same things, haha.

 

I still think A Song For Patsy Cline is one of the few great songs on that album. I also forgot about The Bluest Things On Earth and I Wanted So Badly To Be Brave, which I think are pretty good too. So that makes about six or seven songs on the album that I enjoy. The rest, not so much. I'd say it's an okay album that could have been better but could have been a lot worse. It's certainly better than The Upsides though. And while I'm at it...

Sister Cities > Suburbia > TGG > NCTH > The Upsides

 

I enjoy all the songs on NCTH (Bluest, Hemingway don’t necessarily blow me away but even they are jams) but I think what held it back was the production. I’ve listened to it enough where it doesn’t bother me but in context with TGG and Sister Cities it’s inferior. Also, I never loved the production on Suburbia, tbh. I’d probably rank the albums like Sister Cities > TGG > NCTH > Upsides > Suburbia > Get Stoked

 

Suburbia's production fit though, it was more open and raw sounding than the upsides to give it an edge, but NCTH just sounds compressed to death.

We've debated this for years though. Sister Cities is a return to form, but TGG is still my gold standard for TWY... for now at least.