Tuesday, June 30, 2020

i'm going to update my reviews for a few of these items that i'm backposting.

back in februrary, 2014 i wrote that the ambient sections on this record are amelodic, rambling and highly derivative of a post-rock formula that's been recreated hundreds of times, and angrily discarded comparisons to mbv as an insult to the impeccable craftmanship of that band. i may have given off the impression of a damning review of this disc.

that was not my actual intent. i will stand by initial statements, but i need to temper them with the acknowledgement that this is a listenable record, as badly flawed as it is through varying levels of cliche. time has maybe eroded the annoyance of the juxtaposition at the time and left something that is not entirely without guilty merit.

it's weak all around - in construction, in abstraction and even in grit at points, as that dull blast beat in the end just flattens out all of the dynamics. but, at this point, they might have even been still worth a beer to check out, and i thought about it a few times, but i never did.

so, i was harsh in my comments, but i'd have given it a C or something. and it's maybe even aged a little better than that, as the cliches just sort of fade backwards into some amorphous blob of previous existence.