StraightEdge wrote:I'm probably dumb for asking this, but where was this Acoustic Version of "Allowance"? Is it on the Sony Unlimited. I'm still waiting out till Tuesday to hear the album, but an acoustic song has intrigued me.
I've been listening to the ripped mp3 versions over the last few days and then switched back to the Unlimited stream. The latter sounds way better. I wouldn't judge this album by the ripped versions.
And if I don't make it known that
I've loved you all along
Just like sunny days that
We ignore because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out
What's wrong
Random Name wrote:So I just listened to Heavyweight for the first time today. As much as I loved this band, the last few albums have just totally lacked any inspiration to me. And now, I can't believe this is the same band. Totally blew me away. I guess I am going to keep buying their albums!
IT'S YOU! IT'S REALLY YOU!
I LURK.
really. Hi
-Sarah Goodbye you liar, Well you sipped from the cup but you don't own up to anything Then you think you will inspire Take apart your head (and I wish I could inspire) Take apart your demons, then you add it to the list.
Had the album playing in the background during some cleaning and playing with my son this morning. I'll give it a good listen when I get the actual disc but so far I'm enjoying what I'm hearing. I'd say it's a good extension of Spiritual Machines with a mix of the good parts of the past couple albums (there were a few) and Raine's solo material. Between this album and Big Wreck's Albatross, I'm gonna be set for a while. : )
I was hoping my pre-order would come in today as well so it's nice to hear that's a possibility. I placed mine early and usually have pretty good luck with things coming sooner than expected so hopefully I get an early surprise in the mail today too! Let us know how it sounds at CD quality!
Edit: No CD for me today.
Last edited by DudeLove721 on 4/2/2012, 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'm pretty disappointed that for the rest of my life, I'll know that my first listen of this album was a webrip that tainted how this album sounds forever.
Jskot311 wrote:I'm pretty disappointed that for the rest of my life, I'll know that my first listen of this album was a webrip that tainted how this album sounds forever.
Better hold out for the vinyl!
-Josh
I <3 Kiwi
"The fundamental thing about music is its destiny to be broadcast or shared." -Colin Greenwood of Radiohead
Very pleased to hear the true CD is much higher quality. I honestly thought the rip sounded great, so i can only imagine where it goes from here. The only obvious problem i could make of the rip was mettle peeked a few times and was real staticy, but i couldn't tell if some of that was intentional (sounded like raine was singing through a CB radio, which i thought was done on purpose...).
I will let the non-pirated version sink in for a bit before making my final review of the cd... but so far i think its really strong, but i have trouble placing it with the rest of their discography. I can tell its a huge improvement from where they were.
I let a friend listen to the album (never listened to OLP before, but she was a big radiohead fan, and i believe a lot of the songs really have early radiohead vibes). She told me that she really liked the album, but that "the lead singer has a very limited vocal range". It really took me by surprise, because i had never heard limited vocal range and raine maida in the same sentence before. I really thought about it for a while. I listened to the album after she said that, and was a little surprised to then realize that raine uses falsetto on nearly every song (some much more than others, but its all there). I really do like this CD... I'm excited about it still even after having heard it through a dozen times, i don't skip tracks, and the future is very promising, but i really feel like if had to take every single piece of the songs into consideration, the vocals really are the weakest link. I think this is part of the reasons grocery list hooked me immediately. It just seemed to explore his range a little more. I understand that people grow, and they get old, and they change physically... but i think a lot of raines use of bass range seems to be more of personal preference then physical limitations.
I think the lo-fi sound of Mettle is very intentional, maybe there is a bit of unintentinoal peaking or distortion in the web rip but definitely the vocals have an intentional lo-fi sound, and the vocals distort in a couple places on purpose. Haven't heard the full album at full quality yet, but I listened through the iTunes 90-second previews over the weekend and the newer youtube clips, and there's a lot of detail in the recording that the web rip doesn't really convey. I'm excited to hear it.
As for Raine's voice, and if his style is due to aging/physical limitations or just personal preference, I think that when you think about going out there and touring, playing shows 5 nights per week or whatever, some of the crazy vocal stuff that was on the first 4 albums is just not really viable if you want to be around for the long run. Burn Burn is really the only album where I felt the vocals were lacking in effort. I felt like his delivery on that album wasn't at 100%, he maybe wasn't challenging himself by asking, "the melody is there, but now what can I add to really make it interesting?" I feel like that has certainly been fixed on Curve.
The rest of it, the overall lower voice which some people just don't like as much -- I feel like that is maybe just the voice where he's comfortable night after night, without straining. Maybe it was even a balancing game for a while, knowing that a lot of the older material has that difficult range it makes sense that it has been evened out with a couple albums that didn't have too much of that. Certainly he still has that old voice and it's cool to see it creeping into Curve in a few places (Find Our Way for example). I'm no expert but it's probably for the best that he's not singing that way non-stop night after night.
-Josh
I <3 Kiwi
"The fundamental thing about music is its destiny to be broadcast or shared." -Colin Greenwood of Radiohead
You can rationalize it as much as you need to, but I think his good voice is gone forever. I think he can still pull it off, but chooses not to. Maybe it's more difficult as he ages, or maybe Bob Rock seeped into him and he thinks (in retrospect) it was immature. He now seems to think that people want falsetto, but from what I hear from most people they don't want the falsetto, they want the countertenor sound and paranoid edge present in the first 4 albums. When he does falsetto now it's something that anyone else could do, but what he did before was something unique. I think it's fine to be disappointed that it's not coming back (for whatever reason), and I don't like when people gloss over it because it was at least 50% of what made OLP unique.
Curve is better than anything since SM, but it's not in the same league as the first 4 albums simply because of his vocal delivery.
faninor wrote:As for Raine's voice, and if his style is due to aging/physical limitations or just personal preference, I think that when you think about going out there and touring, playing shows 5 nights per week or whatever, some of the crazy vocal stuff that was on the first 4 albums is just not really viable if you want to be around for the long run. Burn Burn is really the only album where I felt the vocals were lacking in effort. I felt like his delivery on that album wasn't at 100%, he maybe wasn't challenging himself by asking, "the melody is there, but now what can I add to really make it interesting?" I feel like that has certainly been fixed on Curve.
The rest of it, the overall lower voice which some people just don't like as much -- I feel like that is maybe just the voice where he's comfortable night after night, without straining. Maybe it was even a balancing game for a while, knowing that a lot of the older material has that difficult range it makes sense that it has been evened out with a couple albums that didn't have too much of that. Certainly he still has that old voice and it's cool to see it creeping into Curve in a few places (Find Our Way for example). I'm no expert but it's probably for the best that he's not singing that way non-stop night after night.
This.
i don't know about anyone else but i genuinely still enjoy raine's voice a rather lot and definitely don't think it takes anything away from curve at all. i can't really think of many vocalists around after 20 years that are over 40 and sound any better. thom yorke and maybe chris cornell(although i've heard his voice has been weakening lately) are the only ones that comes to mind for me.. meh, each to their own i guess.
Last edited by senseofurgency on 4/2/2012, 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
