The Maine - XOXO: From Love and Anxiety In Real Time (July 9, 2021) Album • Page 49

black & white is about half killer half filler

 

A longshot but any chance someone has an extra ticket to the free show they're doing in LA with the offspring? Just booked an LA trip and realized that would be a thing I could hit up.

 

If Your Light Goes Out is far and away the worst song on this. High Forever is passable but not exactly top tier. I will absolutely back the other 8 songs though. Really solid album

 

Zero chance that “High Forever” is better than “If Your Light Goes Out.”

 

i think it is

 

Maybe there’s not a bad song on this at all.

 

it's a great record and even the songs i'm not thrilled about are highly listenable bc the songwriting is good

 

"If Your Light Goes Out" has a lame chorus but "High Forever" is all lame.

Definitely the two worst songs on here though.

 

Any news on the those additional songs? Curious on the one that they said was better than any song on the album (although I have to wonder why it was left off unless it's part of a strategy!).

 

They've written some amazing closers in their career but Face Towards the Sun might be my new favorite

 

I..uhm...like Black & White??

 

As far as Closers go, I don't think they're going to outdo "Flowers On The Grave" ("How Do You Feel" is probably a better song, but it would work almost anywhere on the album).

 

Goddamn, Fuel to the Fire is GREAT. I can see how they got to an album like XOXO from here.

 

Hell yeah, Black & White is a blast.

 

Black & White is the only album of theirs, besides XOXO, I haven’t seen them play in full. I would love for them to do it, but at this point I doubt they ever will.

 

Do they dislike all/most of the Black & White songs? I seem to remember reading them disown at least one of them, but I can't remember which one.

 

I know there’s a strong dislike for Fuel To The Fire because they mention it a lot. Honestly, there’s a lot of jams on it. I wish it got more love and played from more on their tours.

 

Give It To Me is the worst song in their entire catalogue and I’m gonna include The Way We Talk & Stay Up Get Down EPs in that

 

If only I could ever see them play LLL in full. When they toured that record and did that and AC together, LLL wasn't a record that I adored yet; so I didn't make it a point to go see them. I also just got into them with LLL. Regrets.

 

Justice for B&W. Definitely has a bit of a 'push this out quickly' feel to it since they were popping at the time, and it certainly doesn't touch their newer stuff, but I like the whole album.

 

I remember them feeling like they didn’t have much creative control and had a grueling marketing schedule around that record that exhausted them. That led to them breaking away and writing that independent Pioneer record that they were really proud of and they’ve praised all their records since.

At least, that’s how I remember it

 

These were the two I was thinking the band might hate.

Yeah, that sounds right to me. I think I also remember something about them being forced to work with cowriters they didn't want to work with, or to include lyrics they didn't feel comfortable with.

 

Yeah it almost seemed like they were very cognizant of the “sell out” factor at the time. They didn’t want to be considered sellouts and felt like they were when writing with cowrites and they wanted to be more true to themselves and actually write everything themselves. But they were attached to the label so they had to follow their rules.

I’m speaking a lot for them haha but I just remember watching so many documentaries and interviews and videos they had recorded at the time and that’s the vibe I got. I don’t think it’s a bad record but I sure do enjoy everything they’ve written since more (except FH, I like B&W and CSWS more)

 

I just listened to a podcast where they mentioned that they completely wrote roughly half of the record. Every Road, Saving Grace, and a couple others that i can't remember. Those are the songs you probably have the best chance of hearing, but they even mentioned they are much slower than their average set so they usually don't play them

 

You're not alone in this. I didn't even get into this band until 3 years ago. If they ever do just a LLL tour again, I'll be there in a friggin heartbeat.