Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Experimental yes, but great tunes, 31 Jan 2007
I guess that a follow up to the eponymously titled debut was always going to be difficult. What do you do? More of the same and get slated for being unadventurous or experiment and get slated for not putting out the same material. Whatever they did Clap Your Hands were going to get a serious mauling form some critics and reading around on the internet that's sure what they've got - a serious mauling from SOME critics.
Is it deserved? Absolutely not in my opinion! I can see why some will not like this. Frankly if you didn't get beyond the first track you'd really, really struggle to like this. And the first track's why this album isn't worth five stars because the rest of it is! More of this in a minute. However what we have here is an excellent collection of songs that DOES bear comparison in quality to their debut. There are some excellent tracks here ("Love Song No. 7", "Mama Won't You Keep The Castles In The Air And Burning", "Satan Said Dance", "Goodbye To Mother And The Cove" and "Underwater" stand out for me). They ARE still quirky even though there is a lot more production and effort been ploughed into this and it HAS inevitably lost some of the Lo-Fi brilliance of it's predecessor.
Okay then, Track 1. Well frankly the less said about this the better! I found this a real turn off (literally as I found it painful to listen to!). They have taken what seems like a decent song (when you listen hard enough - which I suggest if you want to keep you hearing intact that you don't) and deliberately distorted it. It really is difficult to listen to without earmuffs on, full of static and a weird metallic lustre that becomes painful after a few seconds. When I turned the CD on for the first play I was very, very disappointed. It took until about track 5 on the first listen to get over it as I was constantly listening for more static as I thought my CD must be duff. But it was deliberate! How daft! What they ought to realise is that by putting something so horrible upfront they are BOUND to aggravate critics! Maybe they'll learn next time.
That's out of the way then - phew! As for the rest of the album, personally i love it. Experimental yes, but great tunes and a pounding rhythm on most songs which most bands can't accomplish without becoming overly loud. I can see that hiring their producer was a mistake and they should banish him back to the hopelessly overrated Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev whence he came. You can hear his influence in lots of little background add-ons such as bells etc. Some of these work but quite often they don't add anything meaningful to the otherwise excellent music.
Overall, this is a very good follow up and a damned sight better than I'd hoped for. Don't listen to the critics that slate this. Listen for yourself. It took me three listens to start really enjoying this and the more I've listened the more I like! A good buy for the discerning ear!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Give it a try, 15 Feb 2007
In the old days we, the listeners, didn't want the same album with the same songs on it, churned out release after release. A band was allowed, and expected, to grow.
It seems like the opposite has now happened.
Some Loud Thunder has been panned and derided as "too experimental" by the esteemed music press. I have never read anything as idiotic and unimaginative as most of the reviews.
Yes, it's very different to the debut and, yes, it doesn't make me want to dance around the kitchen as the previous album did. However, it does make me want to really listen to it.
As another reviewer on here has stated, it still has the same CYHSY elements on it - the brilliant vocals, the great songs and unintelligable lyrics, and I really think that once the shock has faded, people will love it as much as the first album.
Stand out tracks for me are Mama won't help you..., Goodbye to the mother and obviously Satan said dance, which has the kitchen dancing elements to it.
A much more developed album - give it a try...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top class 2nd album., 2 Jul 2007
Don't normally write reviews but feel I need to re-balance some of the poor reviews posted and echo Sameer's comments earlier. Reading them I can't quite believe some of the reviewers have listened to the album but guess everyone has different taste.
I really liked the first album so was excited about getting this. At first I wasn't sure about this album, but not anymore - just give it a chance. Sure there are a few poor tracks on the album as with most albums(tracks 4, 6, 8) but there are also plenty of gems hiding here (esp tracks 1, 3, 7, 9, 11). If you're still not sure, try track 9 (Yankee Go Home) which is immediately likeable and one of the standouts before giving up on this.
In a year of 2nd albums feel this one is 10x better than the disappointing Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys albums.. I rated this 5 stars to balance out the other reviews (1 star?) but honestly this is probably a 4 star effort overall.
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