The National - First Two Pages... & Laugh Track Album • Page 38

Swb had a lot of programmed drums on it too.

 

Indeed it did, and that album rules. Songs like Empire Line and I'll Still Destroy You in particular had a great balance of programmed ones and then Bryan would rampage with real ones very loudly in the mix as those songs progressed

 

This could be a day time SWB (Wake Poorly, Beauty).

*Wake Poorly, Beauty is a trademarked and property of Mint Plus Plus

 

Which felt good as a departure before it became the default percussion choice on almost every track going forward.

That said, still excited for this. They’re one album removed from their two greatest releases in TWFM and SWB, so it feels wild to declare them washed. Just maybe a little too comfortable recently.

 

agreed it's their best

 

Yeah I agree I am easy to find is their best.

 

SWB Ranking

1. SWB

 

I was talking about this song in a group chat and someone said “it’s not a bad song but did Bryan Devendorf die or something?” in case people think it’s just this thread.

 

We're all gonna be so embarrassed when we realize they've been pulling an elaborate Bernie with Devendorf for the last few years.

 

Rumor has it Bryan was sick one day in the studio and got Wally Pipp’d by a drum machine.

 

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty certain the Reid brothers from The Jesus and Mary Chain got in a fight with their drummer and replaced him with a drum machine.

 

Oh yeah totally it's on reddit too, but I get it because Bryan's drumming has been such an integral part of why the band always sounded so awesome and unique and dynamic

 

I hope they go full George Lucas and replace his drums with programmed beats on all previous albums.

 

That drum announcement with just be part of the larger announcement that there will be Taylor's Version releases of the entire back catalog.

 

lmaooo

 

The drums in their older songs just used to be impossible to not tap your fingers to. Like an impulse. I do miss that

 

I’m not surprised other people are talking about the prominence of drum samples as opposed to acoustic drums. This conversation happens every single time because electronic elements, and electronic music in general, are/is seen as “less than”

 

That seems to be quite the generalization lol. It's funny to see certain people in this thread and others get mad at people who are less than thrilled that a wonderful thing that has played a huge part in driving and defining many of this band's incredible musical output over the years has been fairly nonexistent in these 3 new songs. How dare people be kind of disappointed so far

 

I slightly prefer acoustic drums on their songs to electronic but SWB is my favorite of theirs so it obviously doesn’t stop me from enjoying that material

That being said, the particular electronic beats on Weird Goodbyes and Tropic Morning News just suck. Extremely generic to the point of being distracting for me.

This new song is fine, nothing more. Probably slightly prefer it to Tropic overall though.

 

Man idk about this new song. Kinda meandering.

 

Idk if this is quite accurate, but the Weird Goodbyes beats are so bad they remind me like of early 2000s pop music or something. Like for some reason I'm thinking of Mandy Moore and shit like that (no offense to that type of music, it's fun but not what I'm looking for with my favorite band).

 

Bryan is a great drummer and id say that his drumming is a major driving force in a lot of their songs. I think it would be very very unlikely that his drumming would be absent from the record.

 

I understand what you’re saying but Mandy Moore actually has had a pretty awesome career post the pop stuff fyi ha

 

That’s right, how dare you

 

Haven’t listened to the new song yet, but from the two I’ve listened to so far…maybe the drum samples are generic. Perhaps they were chosen to fit the atmosphere of the song and not be distracting. It’s not like Bryan has never played significantly more reserved in an effort to serve the overall song rather than going bananas like he does on songs like I’ll Still Destroy You, Mr. November, Brainy