| And so it begins, the first listening
of an album that will totally change my view of the frames. we'll start
with the cover. slightly radioheadesque, with the dripping effect much
like that of hail to the thief. there's a good few pictures, and all the
lyrics typed out in typewriter style. the album itself begins with "happy",
a song i had only ever heard live. everything sounds better live (more
spontanaity, emotion, etc), so i'm trying to forget that i ever heard it
live and trying desperatly to get into the recorded version. it's rather
darker than the live version, with background "ahh"-ing and all. the loud
bit in the middle sounds like something out of sonic the hedgehog, electronic.
good song, but not my favourite on the album. it swings straight into the
"did y'fall, all the way? it's a long way down..." of "finally", which
is such a great song. "finally" leaves the door open for "dream awake",
a song which i haven't heard before. it starts off quietly, but builds
up to a bloody amazing song. i was sitting at the table doing my maths
homework thinking "my god...what a song". next comes "a caution to the
birds", a song which when i heard the first lines i was like "i know this...."
then it dawned on me that glen played it when i saw him in the cork opera
house. "sound, there's order in the sound, the sound that you don't know.
sound, there's order in the sound, the sound that you don't love". another
fantastic track. "trying" is next, a song i wasn't too crazy on when i
heard it on the "fake" single. i still think that maybe "precarious aiming"
might have been better. "fake" comes after. if the single version was great,
the album version is amazing. the harmony was mostly taken out, and new
lines were added here and there, stuff that you shouldn't notice but you
do, such as glen shouting "i don't know anymore..." and "why are you never
on my side?" instead of "you're never on my side". it gives the whole song
new, confused meaning. track seven, sideways down, is the track lisa hannigan
sings on, and sounds great to have a female voice in there. "underglass"
follows. i had never heard "underglass" before, i expected it to be one
of the quiet tracks, i don't know why, possibly just because of the title.
but it's definately not. "i can't accept your disappointmet.." glen screams
in the chorus. damn right. i'm not disappointed at all with this track.
the next song, "ship caught in the bay", reminds me of another song but
i can't quite lay my finger on it. another song i hadn't heard before but
i'm happy with it, it fits in well with the course of the album. "keepsake"
comes after, one of the scariest songs i have ever heard. it's hackneyed
and cliched i know, but the only word to describe it is haunting. if you're
anything like me, don't listen to it at night. it petrifies me for some
odd reason, but it's definately one of my favourite songs ever. "suffer
in silence" is an interesting song, an acoustic remake of "finally" with
altered lyrics. my interpretation of it is that "finally" and "suffer in
silence" are like the devil and angel on glen's shoulders, telling two
sides of the same story. the album finishes with "locusts", a song dedicated
to mic christopher at gronigen and about ghosts and vampires and curses
and the like. contrary to the chorus in "locusts", "i'm movin off, i'm
packin up", i'm not moving off "burn the maps" at all. i've listened to
all of it once, and some songs a couple of times. and i am blown away.
favourite tracks: 3) Dream Awake,
4) A Caution to the Birds, 6) Fake and 8) Underglass
Livo |
