team boo (mates of state)
I was really into this album as a younger man, when it was first brought to my attention by a hipstery girl that I had an on again/off again (and rarely acted upon) flirtatious rapport. It was good music for driving around and reflecting on the key nights of that experience; but in the past year or two I've really fallen out of favor with this record- it's too high, too yelpy, the instrumentation too limited (just those dinky, rolling keyboards, really.) I'm vaguely confident it's one of the albums I enjoy least, among those in my collection.
But when I listened to the album for the first time in a long time, rather than just waiting for tracks to come up on shuffle and then skipping them, I rediscovered something: a lot of the songs have little treasures buried underneath the first minute of the song, really nice melodic spots that glide in after annoying, yelpy starts. "Ha Ha" is an example; "Gotta Get a Problem," and the biggest contrast is "I Got This Feelin"- really shrill up top, very pretty in the middle.
Among songs that are straight up good, I really like "Fluke," a joyful number paced by a thrillingly tight helix of the synth. "Middle is Gold"- hah, wow, just hit me that that song title is basically the secret code of the album, far as I'm concerned- is an all right song with a great, forceful rhythm section, that's really where that song makes it count.
Yelpy, enthusiastic, stripped-down emo synth pop might not be my thing anymore (or if it ever was), but there's still some exciting and lovely moments here. I still don't really like this album too much, but I certainly appreciate it more now than I did yesterday.
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