Alright, having listened to a bunch more AC now, I hereby declare MPP would have been "perfect" if they had replaced "Bluish" with "What Would I Want? Sky." I've also been really getting into PB's Person Pitch, particularly the song "Bro's" - which, during its first half, has this nice almost Christmas-like tone to it. ;)

I don't find SJ to be "grandiose." I suppose compared to their earlier albums it was, but not compared to MPP. I find MPP to be much, much more ambitious. "In the Flowers" alone seems more ambitious than the entire SJ album.

Maybe "ambitious" or "grandiose" isn't quite the right word, but I'm not quite sure what the right word would be.

By way of comparison, MPP is to the the rest of AC's work as Bridge Over Troubled Water is to the rest of Simon & Garfunkel's work. Hope that makes sense.

I suppose we can chalk this up to the usual differences in taste, but to me there aren't any songs on SJ that really stand out. I don't find any bad songs, but no great or even really good songs, either. On a scale of 1 to 10, every song is about a 4 to 6.

I like Centipede much better, it seems like a more disciplined, refined and melodic or mature version of SJ.

As for the lack of progression on MPP, maybe they were running out of ideas? Seems almost like they took some of their exiting ideas and put them into a more disciplined format than their other albums.

BTW, interesting write-up (written after MPP came out) describing how AC could be considered the first true "internet band:"

LINK

I adore Bluish. Beautiful chorus.

I'm sure it will once I listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water :(

I think "Sky" would usually make a great replacement for "Bluish" but i'm not sure its sound, length, or production would quite fit in its place unless the album were shifted around a little bit. The current configuration kinda makes it difficult though, since they built the album almost only to work in its order.

You may be right about MPP being their kind of exercise while lacking fresher ideas, even though Fall Be Kind has its moments that seem genuinely fresh for the band. I may like the atmosphere that Deakin's presence seems to bring, since he's primarily the band's guitarist, and one who digs a harder edged sound for his instrument at that, which pushes the band toward grittier sounds a la SJ (he wasn't on MPP at all as well).

I am bummed that you don't dig SJ as much, but it was the first album I came to know them by so maybe i'm a little biased. I love a tight album though (but really it can't be that tight when some songs go on for seven minutes), and songs like "Cuckoo Cuckoo" and "Derek" really get my goat. There's just something so sinister about that album that I think is really refreshing in psychedelia, considering the brilliant casualties that the scene has within it (Wilson, Syd Barret, the Beatles as a band kinda). I think a lot of this comes down to how stark they made the production combined with the harsh feedback and dynamics and whatnot.

Centipede Hz does have an interesting industrial side, which does make it tighter melodically for the most part, but I just haven't been able to get my head entirely around it. It has some of my favorite tunes by them ("Applesauce," "Monkey Riches," "New Town Burnout," etc.), but some songs are a little forgettable to me when i step away from the album. It definitely deserves further listens though.

I'm glad you like "Bros," it's generally a favorite from the album, and i even used it for a short short short movie i made. That album has a really unique sound no one's really tried before or since.

Also, I think Avey Tare sings most of Feels, and he has a pretty divisive voice - he also sings/screams most of SJ which i'm sure some people could do without. It reminds me of a lighter kind of MPP though, in how blissful most of it is (i say lighter because MPP has a very dense, thoroughly concocted wall of sound thing going for it) - its simpler in its songwriting too, though, and leans more on tribal sounds. And while I don't see a whole lot of seriousness in Sung Tongs, it is one of their more bare albums, which gives it a hint of solemnity; kind of natural, maybe. "Kids on Holiday" is definitely one of their more serious efforts, though, and kind of reminds me of a more stripped down, low key "Fireworks" in the theme. And yes, the last song is pretty damn goofy sounding, one of their kinda infantile experimental tracks, which I'm down with because i also love the childhood themes in psychedelic stuff. I'm gonna chalk it up to Barret lineage.

But what's your favorite stuff from the Hz? And have you dug Fall Be Kind outside of "Sky"? "Graze" is one of the standout tracks on that one for me.

Also, when do you think the Wilson/AC collabo will go down?

PS: I can't speak much to the internet band status because 1) i haven't followed them long enough :( and 2) i kinda don't get a lot of the internet's implications because i was practically born into it.

My favorite song from Hz is definitely Rosie Oh. Best electric reggae song ever!! It's a great example of what I was talking about before about ideal mixes between the familiar (in this case, Reggae) and the experimental. Pulleys is really good too, as is Applesauce.

As for Fall Be Kind, by now I think I've listened to it probably 10 times ... and it only just arrived in the mail today from amazon.com!! The whole CD is great, and at this point the best song is a 3-way tie between Sky, Bleed and I Think I Can. In fact I think I'll go so far as to say it's as good as MPP, maybe even better, with the downside that it's too short! Four more songs would have been great.

Anyway, back to the Bridge Over Troubled Water analogy, when you get around to listening to the album, you'll notice that it's far, far removed from their prior folk-rock stuff (though Bookends was definitely heading away from that already). If you listen to S&G's first album, then listen to BOTW, it's like day and night. BOTW is this massively ambitious, highly produced, almost epic in scale commercial blockbuster, while their early stuff was just some (very) pretty folk tunes. Some people who like pretty folk tunes might not like the highly-produced, extremely ambitious scope of BOTW, but there's no denying it's a masterpiece and Paul Simon's songwriting had taken a huge leap. Seems to me comparing MPP to AC's earlier work is like comparing Bridge Over Troubled Water to Wednesday Morning, 3AM.

BTW, I've been having this fantasy the past couple days that I go back in a time machine to 1967 with a CD player and some AC CD's, and play them for Brian Wilson. Then watch him completely freak out. :D

Interesting article on the recording and mixing of MPP:
http://www.sweettea.net/animal.pdf

A couple things from Panda Bear's upcoming album. I thought Tomboy was nice but not nearly as adventurous as Person Pitch. These sound like he's trying something new and different again.

I'm guessing the first one is just a sample from an incomplete song. Maybe also the 2nd, though it's longer. Not even sure I like the 2nd that much, but at least it's different and interesting.

Absolute ... must ... listen-to ...