全体的に「Do The Collapse」の延長線上にあるような骨格がしっかりとしたバンドサウンドが印象的なアルバムで、彼らにしてはポップフォーマットにのっとったような展開の曲が並んでいます。3曲目はポージーズ風、5曲目はR.E.M.風で思わず頬が緩みます。エリオットスミスが数曲でピアノとオルガンを弾いています。ポラードの詩は相変わらずどこか歪んだ日常を映し出しています。こういう詩が好きな方は、あるうちに日本盤を。ジャケだけどうにかならないかな。。かなり損してると思われます。。ペイヴメント、レモンヘッズあたりが好きな方は間違いないと思います。ちょっと変わった良いメロディーが聴きたいなら損はしないはず。
5つ星のうち5.0Bob Pollard deserves to sound good, so quit complaining
2001年8月29日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済み
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You might as well call them GBV2, because this is not the same band the recorded Alien Lanes, Bee Thousand, or Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. Not the same musicians, and not the same sound. But all you lo-fi, indie fanatics, listen up: IT IS STILL THE SAME DAMN HEART AND SOUL! Grow up, for God's sake. Bob has always wanted the band to sound like this, he just never had enough money to afford it. Just because you sit around your cheesy apartment with a crummy boom box for a stereo that can't reproduce anything but lo-fi sound anyway, doesn't mean Bob Pollard, America's best songwriter in the last ten years, shouldn't be allowed to evolve into his own rock and roll dream band. And if you're so hung up on indie sounds, buy Bob's solo projects. You'll love Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department. Oh, but wait, it's got Doug Gillard on it, and he can actually tune his guitar and play it with some kind of brilliant skill and imagination. You should check out the GBV web page and read some of Bob's interviews, if you want to know where he's coming from with this new band, starting with Do the Collapse. Sure, it might be a little too refined, and he even admits he wants more range in the fidelity, but these albums are about the SONGS, not the SOUND, and when are you going to get that through your thick heads??? And besides, when have you ever heard a GBV album you didn't have to listen to five times before you got to know the individual songs? The same is true for GBV2. And go see the band in concert, because they play more old stuff than new stuff, and the old stuff sounds a hell of a lot better than it did on those garage four-track cassette recordings. Oh sure, we don't have the charm of guitar tracks intermittently dropping out, or songs recorded over long distance telephone lines, but we can at least finally HEAR THE MUSIC. And that is what it's all about. Robert Pollard is a songwriter, first and foremost. The fact that he was an indie, lo-fi icon was the result of poverty, not planning or intent. But Bob still loves you, and thanks to his contract with TVT records, he can put out as many lo-budget, lo-fi CDs as he wants under his own name, or any other name he thinks is funny. But don't dis the man because he's finally achieving some success. He deserves it, and you better pay more attention and listen to those new CDs, or you don't deserve him.
One of my favorite from them. Moves along seamlessly from song to song. Kind of produced similar to Do the Collapse with that big sound. Highly recommended.