Greetings all-
Since everybody is picking sides here, and TRT seems to be losing, I'll
offer a few words in its support. There seem to be three major complaints
with the album, the most common of which is the (over) producing. I don't
think producing can really be blamed for the love-to-hate songs like One,
Snibe, Television, etc. It seems to me that producing can make a good song
better, or it can make a bad song worse. For example, the album version of
The Ocean is, IMO, substantially better than the demo. However, when
effects are substituted for good music, as in most of Killed By An Angel
(the bridge is cool, you have to admit) it makes the song that much worse.
If you look at HIFTBSO, the less-than-stellar songs, like, say Two Promies,
don't have much in the way of producing, and just end up just kind of
sitting there not hurting anybody, but not really adding much to the album
either. Wheras, on TRT, they stick out like sore thumbs. But that doesn't
make the rest of the album less enjoyable (for me anyway). The Ocean, TRT,
TiMH, and Disappear are all among the Best Songs Ever Written By SDRE in my
book.
Another related complaint is that the band has transformed its HIFTBSO
sound into some (insertuniversallydespisedbandhere-esque) arena-rock. I
really don't think that's the case. Listen to the untitled outtake from
TRT; it sounds just like HIFTBSO stuff. I tend to agree with people who say
that the band is "maturing," with the defintion of "maturing" being "if
they can take everything they did right on this album, and combine it with
everything they did right on previous albums, good things will happen." As
opposed to "TRT is as good as SDRE will ever be."
Oh, and as for the lyrics. Sure, the One lyrics are one big cliche. But,
apart from that, I don't think the album is that bad. Certainly better than
the pink album (I'm still not convinced that Jeremy did't just adlib that
entire album, save the leftover Diary/7" songs). How it feels is probably
has more consistently poetic ltrics than TRT, but there's some decent
material on TRT. I'm not going to provide a couple of lines and say "Now
*that's* poetry" or anything; I trust that you're familiar with the lyrics.
ka-ching $.02
~Peter
