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Old 09-17-2015, 01:24 AM   #181
run2pee
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Instead of feeling like I am exploring a lyrical or songwriting idea with bill, or hearing bill express himself, or experiencing the thrill of musicianship (all things I used to feel listening to SP) I feel this vaguely irritating alienation. These don't even feel like "songs." I don't know what they are. I guess according to bill they were intended as entertainment primarily, as "product."

Fuck that.

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 01:28 AM   #182
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It's not Billy on the record, it is him posing as who he thinks people want.

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 06:36 AM   #183
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the most compelling thing of the album I think


 
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Old 09-17-2015, 08:09 AM   #184
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'monuments' should have been the single. everybody, everywhere would be singing "alright, alright, alright," all the time. even the kidz. that is the fuckin hook.

fuckin 'run 2 me'...

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 09:06 AM   #185
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Run To Me View Post
Instead of feeling like I am exploring a lyrical or songwriting idea with bill, or hearing bill express himself, or experiencing the thrill of musicianship (all things I used to feel listening to SP) I feel this vaguely irritating alienation. These don't even feel like "songs." I don't know what they are. I guess according to bill they were intended as entertainment primarily, as "product."

Fuck that.
One of my favorite things Billy brought to the band was his overarching sense of aesthetic every album. LSD trip on Gish, warm summer days screwing around with Big Muff pedals on SD, Victorian era songs/art/feel on MCIS, 'turn of the century techno' on Adore, heavy wall of sound on Machina, vaguely Christian thing on MSTOS. And it was cool. It was really nice.

And now the aesthetic he's pushing is radio singles. what the fuck is that

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 09:48 AM   #186
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ram27 View Post
...vaguely Christian thing on MSTOS. And it was cool. It was really nice.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/e8c28224a...1KL1qaohdj.jpg

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 10:43 AM   #187
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I listened to Tiberius for the first time in like 9 months today. The way the song loses energy after it comes back in from the Space Jam riff with that ascending synth part just sums up everything that went wrong with that album.

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 11:40 AM   #188
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook View Post
how

it's called "mary star of the sea" & has a song called "jesus, i" for christ's sake (npi)

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 12:08 PM   #189
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ayy lmao

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 01:32 PM   #190
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You guys, I just want my band back. And my songs. And my dreams.

But until then I'll listen to Hello Kitty Kat when I need to fix a flat tire on my bike.

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 02:19 PM   #191
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does anyone here have a clue what the lyrics to the chorus of 'anti-hero' are? something about aliens, i think...

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 02:36 PM   #192
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bomb The Moon View Post
does anyone here have a clue what the lyrics to the chorus of 'anti-hero' are? something about aliens, i think...
I have no intention to ever listen to this song again, but spfc has a clue:
Ode to the alien weekend

http://www.spfc.org/songs-releases/s...7&song_type=-1

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 02:44 PM   #193
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Thought it was "owing to the..."

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 03:36 PM   #194
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Maybe the real billy was abducted and this is the clone/puppet/experiment/pod-person version we are witnessing.

 
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Old 09-17-2015, 03:37 PM   #195
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I say this good-heartedly

 
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Old 09-18-2015, 02:25 AM   #196
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or maybe, very maybe, this is the real billy.

 
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Old 09-18-2015, 07:57 AM   #197
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Quote:
Originally Posted by slunken View Post
Maybe the real billy was abducted and this is the clone/puppet/experiment/pod-person version we are witnessing.
that would explain a lot. maybe MTAE is a concept album, revealing this to us in some secret lyrical code...
fuckin' pod-billy.

 
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Old 09-18-2015, 03:03 PM   #198
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Originally Posted by Bomb The Moon View Post
'monuments' should have been the single. everybody, everywhere would be singing "alright, alright, alright," all the time. even the kidz. that is the fuckin hook.

fuckin 'run 2 me'...
I've been wanting to make a music video for Monuments that is nothing more than a supercut of Matthew McConaughey saying Alright, Alright, Alright in line with the lyrics. Most of the rest of the video would be from the weird car commercial he did.

Too bad I don't have any time. Or talent. And that the idea itself is bad.

 
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Old 09-18-2015, 04:09 PM   #199
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or you could just listen to boris instead.

fuck sp. boris is way better.

 
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Old 09-19-2015, 03:24 AM   #200
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Originally Posted by DemonUnicorns View Post
That feel that he put more thought into each SP1 song individually than all of MTAE combined.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ram27 View Post
Hell he spent like 5 minutes recording Rotten Apples and it's better than all of MTAE
somehow both of these things are true.

 
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Old 09-19-2015, 09:33 AM   #201
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it's, like, a paradox

 
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Old 10-05-2015, 10:45 PM   #202
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I think we can't quite grasp that Billy is well into middle age now. We know it, but don't accept it. Every song we love is like, a 20 year old guy frozen in time, and always will be. But that guy is just gone, and been gone. With the MTAE hype before it came out, I thought, yeah he can do it again if he wants to, go back to the basics and blow us away. But he can't. Part of the problem is that, yeah, it always came effortlessly. He really did write those songs in 30 minutes, or sitting at a traffic light. And he tried to do that with MTAE, but it doesn't work like that anymore. Even he probably doesn't know how he was able to do it back then. Whatever that spark was is gone, and now it will take effort and he'd have to care enough to go all in. I'll always believe he can still do it, but I don't think he will again. That goes without even mentioning the others. Forget Jimmy, without James Iha the pumpkins we love is probably just not possible. Given that, I'm loving a few of the Monuments songs and happy with that.

 
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Old 10-05-2015, 11:49 PM   #203
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Forget Jimmy, without James Iha the pumpkins we love is probably just not possible.
When is everyone going to realize this

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 12:11 AM   #204
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(Billy + Jimmy + hire + hire) > (Billy + hire + hire + hire)

since we know James isn't coming back

Historically speaking though I totally agree, Adore was better than ZG, James is a good foil to BC, etc

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 12:24 AM   #205
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He needs to stop trying to put together a band that looks cool and like SP, and be confident enough in his own songwriting and personality to get a proper band to support him, like Bob Dylan does. i've been saying that for ages. Listening to something like Someday Baby on Modern Times always makes me think of what would happen if Billy did the same thing. In two years he'll be fifty. Ain't nobody wanna see ole grampa tryin to rock it up, y'know?

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 10:07 AM   #206
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Quote:
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I think we can't quite grasp that Billy is well into middle age now. We know it, but don't accept it. Every song we love is like, a 20 year old guy frozen in time, and always will be. But that guy is just gone, and been gone. With the MTAE hype before it came out, I thought, yeah he can do it again if he wants to, go back to the basics and blow us away. But he can't. Part of the problem is that, yeah, it always came effortlessly. He really did write those songs in 30 minutes, or sitting at a traffic light. And he tried to do that with MTAE, but it doesn't work like that anymore. Even he probably doesn't know how he was able to do it back then. Whatever that spark was is gone, and now it will take effort and he'd have to care enough to go all in. I'll always believe he can still do it, but I don't think he will again. That goes without even mentioning the others. Forget Jimmy, without James Iha the pumpkins we love is probably just not possible. Given that, I'm loving a few of the Monuments songs and happy with that.
Same thing happened to Robert Smith in the late 90's. He wrote a pretty good song about just that called '39' on Bloodflowers. At some point you lose that fire, in part because you've gotten older, more self-aware, and start losing confidence in yourself. You start aiming for what people know you for. The songs get formulaic. And then half of what comes afterward sounds like your own tribute band.

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 12:07 PM   #207
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Originally Posted by MTAE View Post
I think we can't quite grasp that Billy is well into middle age now. We know it, but don't accept it. Every song we love is like, a 20 year old guy frozen in time, and always will be. But that guy is just gone, and been gone.
With the MTAE hype before it came out, I thought, yeah he can do it again if he wants to, go back to the basics and blow us away. But he can't. Part of the problem is that, yeah, it always came effortlessly. He really did write those songs in 30 minutes, or sitting at a traffic light. And he tried to do that with MTAE, but it doesn't work like that anymore. Even he probably doesn't know how he was able to do it back then. Whatever that spark was is gone, and now it will take effort and he'd have to care enough to go all in. I'll always believe he can still do it, but I don't think he will again. That goes without even mentioning the others. Forget Jimmy, without James Iha the pumpkins we love is probably just not possible. Given that, I'm loving a few of the Monuments songs and happy with that.
I personally think that this is actually the problem with Billy. He had success vomiting up songs in the 90s and feels that that's the only way to write songs. It's like the idea or honing your craft and getting better at it doesn't exist to him so he's subsequently never grown as a songwriter.

I'd argue that practice worked in the 90s cuz of the culture of the time, but people are smarter now and don't react as well to songs/lyrics that sound like they were just slopped onto melodies and chord changes pop into the head of a 50 year old man that sound as if they were written by a 15 year old boy.

People are interested in layering and meaning of music and songs, we love bts stuff and inside info regarding songs and songcrafting and songwriting. Billy knows none of this. He just wants to champion the idea that the Chicago school system deemed him a musical genius 40 years ago and wants to continue with the notion that his songs just pour out of him with no real sense or meaning.

And he doesn't get why people don't relate to his music anymore. In his head what worked when he was 20 should work now. In all reality he was just incredibly lucky. If he were 10 years younger he'd still be working for minimum wage at a second hand store, begging his customers to listen to his mixtapes, bad lyrics and all.

And any SP fan/altrock fan who's unaware that Billy's fast approaching senior citizen status is living under a rock. The dude has seriously hyperaged over the last 10 years or so...

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 12:24 PM   #208
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I don't really care how sophisticated the song is honestly...I'd rather listen to that shitty jam at the beginning of WBFTT than anything on Monuments

And there were tons of songs in the 90s that had sense, meaning, and thought put into them

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 06:23 PM   #209
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And there were tons of songs in the 90s that had sense, meaning, and thought put into them
Yeah. It's not like Soma just popped out fully formed. But I think that spark would hit and he'd have something in minutes. Then what seems like a contradiction, he'd obsess for months over one song making it perfect.

That's why I'm kind of sad following the updates on the pumpkins nexus, because it's clear that he has better things to do than disappear for months and obsess over one song. Maybe it takes a young guy to do that. But come on, wrestling, the tea shop, whatever. So much energy still, it's just all over the place. Now we're supposed to hold our breath for D4N? Okay. If he doesn't focus that energy and direct that shit properly I'm gonna have to slap a bitch.

 
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Old 10-06-2015, 11:39 PM   #210
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After putting some distance between myself and all things SP, I decided to listen this album again since it has been about 8 months since I last listened to it…and I somehow dislike it even more than I did when I first heard it. I just can't get through a whole song without wanting to skip it.

On the plus side, I've gained a whole new appreciation for Oceania. It's not great but it's a better conceived album than monuments, I think. It has about 3 really good songs on it, which is more than monuments for me.

I also went back and listened to the TBK material and that all now sounds completely unlistenable to me. Zeitgeist still sounds awful to me (those vocals just kill me), save 1-2 songs and most of the b-sides. Of all the post-2000 SP material, there's only about maybe 10 songs that I think are really great. There's just such a distinct split in the quality and production of his songs between pre-2000 and post-2000 SP, it's so jarring. And I don't think it has anything at all to do with his age or not wanting to obsess over a single song.

 
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