Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

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pitkin88
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Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by pitkin88 » Sat Jul 22, 2017 2:57 am

First of all it is way better than W2MN. In no particular order:

Fallen In Love: Surprisingly good and manages to stray just far enough from the silly title. Ezrin thankfully allows the musicians to breathe here an Alice is having a lot of fun. There are some in jokes for the hardcore fans " dirty Desperado " and Billy's riffing and solo are really good. 8/10. This would make a great video and 45.

Fireball: This one should have opened the album and could have easily been longer. Ezrin should really have let this one just go off the rails. There is a nice effect on Alice's voice and some very cool soloing. Cool little story. One of the album stand outs. 8/10

Dynamite Road: One of the weaker tracks. Poor lyrics and the song, despite some great ( yes Larry drunmming ) and some solid guitar parts, doesn't seem to quite know where it is going.
5/10.

Holy Water: This one is bad. Awful. Hard to think of anuthing good to say about it. 3/10

Rats: Absolute white powder stunner that just rips along. I wish Alice would do more fast numbers like this. The Chuck Berry/Marty McFly outro nails it and should have been longer. Best song on the album 9/10

Genuine American Girl: If you don't like this you are a miserable git. Ezrin's production is a bit muddy and the middle section could have been a little better but all said and done pure Fun 8/10.

Private Public Breakdown: Sounds like a 60's psych cover. Needs something maybe a bit nore pace and a chorus. Could be a grower though. 6/10

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by pitkin88 » Sat Jul 22, 2017 3:11 am

Paranoiac Personality: Great intro then really goes nowhere. 5/10

Paranormal: I don't like the intro and the repeating. It's just a bit predictable. It's certainly not up there with This House Is Haunted though similar in theme. 5/10

You And All Your Friends: Is this a follow on to Fireball? Ezrin's production again is muddy. Nice solo. Michael? Solid though not spectacular. 7/10

The Sound of A: Definitely a grower. Sounds a bit Bond like in parts. Pity the band couldn't have played on this as it is made for them. Another one that could have been longer. Thanks Dennis 7.5.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by guttertrash » Sat Jul 22, 2017 7:30 am

Fireball, Rats, and You And All Your Friends are definitely all three really good. Genuine American Girl is good, but I am not into vocal surf music. Public Private Breakdown and The Sound Of A are both fine, but not anything special to me. Dead Flies and it's copping of the Machine Gun drum lick and Hendrix-inspired strat guitar is annoying to me, because it is not done well at all. Holy Water, Dynamite Road, and Fallen In Love are hideously bad to me. Larry Mullen actually does pretty great on most of the album, but him trying to play like Frank Beard is just terrible. It's not a style he can pull off. Everybody knows how I feel about the two singles.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by pitkin88 » Sat Jul 22, 2017 8:38 am

I forgot about Dead Flies: Not the best tune. Definetly see the similarities to Gen Landslide ( maybe the SF version more ). There's a small riff in there that sounds like Live and Let Die. Decent song 6/10

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by concolz » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:26 pm

Paranormal Basically, Eleanor Rigby fed through the metal machine. Ezrin chucks in the kitchen sink bombast straight away. More pompous, than pomp. 4/10

Dead Flies Dead good! Plenty of quasi-Hendrix strut & stomp. 9/10

Fireball Best song on the album. Sounds like a new, hungry band; co-opting the spirit of Hawkwind, and feeding that through the punk machine this time. 10/10

Paranoiac Personality Great intro; pretty good verse; rotten, classic rawk, chorus. More widdling and bombast. 5/10

Fallen In Love Gibbons gives it some effective scuzz & fuzz; AC in great voice. Grown on me a lot. 7/10

Private Public Breakdown '70s glam-meets-power pop. 8/10

Dynamite Road Country-metal hokum. Sounds jigsawed together. 4/10

Holy Water Holy Crap. 1/10

Rats Motors along okay; very Chuck Berry. 7/10

The Sound Of A Sounds like a cast-off from Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Tries to be portentous, but ends up po-faced. Goes nowhere slowly. 3/10

Genuine American Girl Great little garage-pop nugget. 8/10

You And All Your Friends. Stodgier than a suet pudding. 2/10

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by GailsFriend » Thu Jul 27, 2017 6:38 pm

Has anyone heard the similarity between "Fallen In Love" and Fastway's song "Say What You Will"?
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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by revinkevin » Thu Jul 27, 2017 7:58 pm

All in all a pretty solid effort. Still not feeling that 70's or Killer vibe he talked about except in a couple of them. The two with the original band has me wanting a whole lot more of that stuff. Neal's drumming is a driving force and makes you take notice. Maybe that November stretch of the tour where Dennis, Mike and Neal join him on stage leads to something special. Fingers crossed on that one.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by pitkin88 » Fri Jul 28, 2017 12:44 am

GailsFriend wrote:Has anyone heard the similarity between "Fallen In Love" and Fastway's song "Say What You Will"?


A link might help.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by Toronto Bob » Fri Jul 28, 2017 2:26 am

Well this sounds encouraging. I was going to take a pass on this as I did with the Hollywood Vampire thing but I may reconsider

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by guttertrash » Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:30 am

I'm not sure what song on the album doesn't sound like another band.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by Devon » Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:38 am

I've listened to it and while there are some good songs, I was a bit disappointed overall. There are times when the music sounds a bit "mechanical" and without feeling and the tempos of the songs seem rushed. As though the hired guns came in, rushed their parts in 1 take and left. There's no "breathing room" or feel. Ezrin reached out to a guy for some guitar riffs and compiled some truly unmemorable moments in my opinion.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by concolz » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:13 am

For me, it's a 50/50 split, like the album cover: six good and six poor songs. That's a better ratio than W2MN (which I eventually got rid of), and miles better than the terrible HVs; still only a three star record at most, though.

A couple of the songs - Paranormal & PP - would be much more effective if the usual bombast hadn't been troweled on; sometimes, less is more. BE seems to have a lot of influence over AC, and I don't think a mish mash of outside writers and guests does him any favours. (I wonder what his touring band - outside of TH - think, of being completely excluded from the studio album?)

There's no concept, so the songs could have been accommodated on one disc - the live tracks being pure filler; that smacks of rip-off by all parties concerned.

I won't be buying the album.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by bigbradwolf » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:18 am

concolz wrote:For me, it's a 50/50 split, like the album cover: six good and six poor songs. That's a better ratio than W2MN (which I eventually got rid of), and miles better than the terrible HVs; still only a three star record at most, though.

A couple of the songs - Paranormal & PP - would be much more effective if the usual bombast hadn't been troweled on; sometimes, less is more. BE seems to have a lot of influence over AC, and I don't think a mish mash of outside writers and guests does him any favours. (I wonder what his touring band - outside of TH - think, of being completely excluded from the studio album?)

There's no concept, so the songs could have been accommodated on one disc - the live tracks being pure filler; that smacks of rip-off by all parties concerned.

I won't be buying the album.
Nita sounded slightly bummed on social media about not being involved. Ryan's been involved quite heavily previously. Maybe they just preferred down time away from the heavy touring schedule when it came to the writing of the album.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by pitkin88 » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:24 am

Could someone please post the writing credits.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by kevinuk81 » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:27 am

When was the last Alice album to have just his band playing? No 'guests', no ex ACG members?
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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by Si » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:31 am

pitkin88 wrote:Could someone please post the writing credits.
Now - on the Paranormal page in the discography.
I'm adding the musician credits now so they will be up soon as well. It's hard to read them in the booklet with my aging eyesight!!

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by padre_sliprat » Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:37 am

bigbradwolf wrote:Nita sounded slightly bummed on social media about not being involved. Ryan's been involved quite heavily previously. Maybe they just preferred down time away from the heavy touring schedule when it came to the writing of the album.
They're both involved on the live tracks.
kevinuk81 wrote:When was the last Alice album to have just his band playing? No 'guests', no ex ACG members?
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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by RemarkablyInsincere » Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:06 am

bigbradwolf wrote:Maybe they just preferred down time away from the heavy touring schedule when it came to the writing of the album.
Everything I know about these players indicates they would love to contribute to an Alice album.
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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by bigbradwolf » Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:23 am

RemarkablyInsincere wrote:
bigbradwolf wrote:Maybe they just preferred down time away from the heavy touring schedule when it came to the writing of the album.
Everything I know about these players indicates they would love to contribute to an Alice album.
it does make you wonder who makes these decisions. I understand you can probably have too much people involved but you would think with the camaraderie of the live band this would help with the collaboration of writing the album.

I can kind of see the logic in not involving Nita in this project because her own stuff and her style of play would have been perfect for the late 80's, early 90's era. I think Alice has moved away from that style.

Ryan, on the other hand, has featured in several Alice albums (DD, Eyes).

Logically you would have thought Glen would have been drumming on the record not Mullen Jr. Is it a business decision to feature guests? Probably. Then again I can't imagine anyone buying a record based on the drummer (no disrespect to drummers).



It does get you questioning if there are any politics in the touring band. I can't imagine so as they all seem to be the best of friends.

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Re: Thoughts On And Ranking The New Album

Post by Devon » Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:26 am

I would say Nita would have been a welcome addition in hindsight! She's a stand out and I think something that has been missing from Alice's music for a while is truly stand out musicianship.

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