While the overall sound is massive, it’s become somewhat restricted in tone and texture, most tracks careering towards climaxes of cacophonous synth whines and heavy rock guitars, a narrower palette than on previous albums.
On The Worse Things Get…, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet
This seamless synthesis of sinew and silicon is crucial to the album’s slippery feel; there’s a pleasing fluidity and crooked funkiness to the arrangements that Yorke sometimes struggled to achieve on The Eraser.
The Stand-In has everything that made its predecessor special – big voice, expertly crafted tunes, clever backings, a deft mix of stridency and restraint – but is definitely a step up.
These songs instinctually shy away from grandstanding or big gestures; every time you think they’re headed for a fist-pumping chorus, they’ll veer off, or Berninger will shrug off the gravity with a lyrical clown move delivered in deadpan.
AM ... feels a considerably more self-assured album: heavy in a dramatic and confident way, conceptually strong, and not without groove.
It’s a tough, late-night, soul-searching kind of process that Kurt Vile has signed up for here. It’s a testament to his talent that he takes it so seriously, but makes it all sound effortless.
Among Callahan's very best.
Rarely since the Laurel Canyon heyday of CSNY, Jackson Browne et al has the confessional mode been quite so unashamedly mined for artistic ore.
As by his own admission he’s more of a voyeuristic, narrative songwriter than an emotional miner: here, the music fills in the unwritten emotional content lurking behind his observations.
Overall m b v is more of a time capsule than a box of surprises, but the contents have survived in immaculate condition.