All Good Dreamers Pass This Way

Bedroom Walls | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 23, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Baria Records
• ASIN: B000F6ZI7Y
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,200 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #91 in Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop

Track Listings

1. In Anticipation of Your Suicide

2. Who's Been Driving Round for Days

3. Kathy in Her Bedroom

4. Six Weeks in the Imperial Gardens

5. Mandy

6. Hello, Mrs. Jones

7. Somewhere in Newhall

8. Then the Narrator Smiles

9. Do the Buildings and Cops Make You Smile?

10. A Succession of White Days

11. If the Storm Breaks and Your'e at Home

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Homie, please!: At Least 4.5 to 4.75 Stars for this Star Search Judge, June 9, 2007

By 

Michael "Somewhere in Austin" (Los Angeles, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Good Dreamers Pass This Way (Audio CD)

Fortunately, this reviewer knows a little more about good music and just a tad bit more about the trajectory of Bedroom Walls' sound (having grown up in LA and followed the band at live gigs for the past 5 years across state lines) than the previous, sole reviewer of All Good Dreamers Pass this Way. But don't let my affinity for this band allow you to think my review is bias or corrupt. They are just a damn good band in a time of too few of them. The last five albums I have purchased are as follows: Elliott Smith, "New Moon", Joseph Arthur, "Nuclear Daydream", Wilco, "Sky Blue Sky", Explosions in the Sky, "All of a sudden I miss everyone", and Bedroom Walls, "All good dreamers pass this way" And, to tell you the truth, I have been listening to their record as much as those other "heavyweights" living or dead or caught somewhere in between.

Theirs is a sound a lot less Bowie or New Order influenced (actually one can discern much more clearly a New Order influence on an earlier EP version of "Kathy in her Bedroom" on SINGLES REMIND ME OF KISSES, which only the luckiest of fans now own) than they are by the guitar rock of Galaxie 500 or the aesthetic of The Clientele or late Talk Talk or the best of Pink Floyd (pre- and post- Syd Barrett up until and through Wish You Were Here). Yet, Kathy proves a "minor track" compared to the masterpieces that are "Six Weeks in the Imperial Gardens", "Then the Narrator Smiles" and "If the Storm Breaks and You're at Home", which is perhaps the best track on a record that keeps getting better as each track elapses. This is not to say the other cuts are not noteworthy, they certainly are: "In Anticipation of Your Suicide" is up there with all the great rock opening tracks of all time (think about the discussion of the top 5 opening tracks of all time between John Cusack and the always- annoying Jack Black in High Fidelity).

The songwriting and arrangements here are better than Stephen Merritt (Magnetic Fields), Tony Dekker (Great Lake Swimmers) and Roky Erikson (The Thirteenth Floor Elevators), and Goldman's voice is just as resonantly pleasing and coy than anyone else that comes to mind (think about what it would sound like if Chet Baker, Joe Pernice, Lou Reed and Morrisey could get together (sans female copulation) and produce an uber-talented offspring (Goldman) whose tonality ends up, at times, outdistancing them all).

But, in the end, Bedroom Walls are unclassifiable, incomparable, and exceptionally in a class of their own as all significant bands are. You have to listen for yourself, preferably after a bad breakup or when your family pet suddenly dies. The version of Kathy, as heard on AGDPTW, sounds a world apart, but equally satisfying. . . more like you would hear on the carousel as a kid, trying to grab that brass ring, but always falling short. . . a merry-go-round Sound (eat your heart out Phil Spector!!) for us older manic depressives.

All Good Dreamers Pass this Way is even better than Bedroom Walls' first album, I Saw You Coming Back to me, which also features "Do the Buildings and Cops Make you Smile?"

It is records like All Good Dreamers Pass This Way, which only make Paris Hilton's incarceration that much more sweeter!!!

Take a shower, take a Valium pill, open a bottle of Sin Zin, change into your pj's, turn the dimmer down, crawl into bed with your stereo remote, and get sad.

Then, the very next night, emerge from your hermetic shell and go and see them live. . . who knows? you just might meet your next ex- girlfriend or boyfriend.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tantalizing, November 30, 2006

By 

Greg Cleary (Marquette, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: All Good Dreamers Pass This Way (Audio CD)

I bought this CD because a friend put "Kathy in Her Bedroom" on a mix tape, and it was the most perfect pop song I'd heard in a long time. It's a high-energy song, with great melodies and a wonderful arrangement. It reminds me of another California band called Bikeride, although the guitar break has an eighties feel, like New Order. I just can't get enough of this song.

Sometimes it's hard for an album to live up to the promise of a great single (in some alternate universe, "Kathy in Her Bedroom" is #1 in the charts, although in the real world it may not even be a single), and I suppose that's true for this album as well. But it sure does have some wonderful moments. The opener, "In Anticipation of Your Suicide," would also be a great mix tape song were it not for the title. It reminds me a lot of Big Star. Unfortunately, it ends abruptly, just after the two-minute mark. Another potentially great song, "Somewhere in Newhall," features a torrid string section that sounds like "Psycho" meets "Eleanor Rigby," and when the voice and drums come in it will make your spine tingle--but once again, it ends prematurely.

And that's the kind of album this is. This band has amazing talent, and I especially love the way they combine stringed instruments with rock instruments, but they seem to have a very different idea than I do about how to develop a song. Also, there are some slow, dreamy songs that are rather dull, and they kill the momentum that is created by the more upbeat numbers. And "Do the Buildings and Cops Make You Smile?" although it is a fun little pop song, is just a little bit too much of a ripoff of Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide."

So go ahead and buy this one for "Kathy in Her Bedroom" and some other tantalizing glimpses of this band's talent, and let's hope their next one is a more well-rounded effort.