Customer Reviews

Place in the Sun

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wanted to warn anyone who like me, made this their first venture into FOMD, by way of recommendation after discovering the melodic and beautiful music of Calexico and OP8. There's nothing wrong with this album, it's well-crafted. It's just not what I was looking for. Unlike the other music mentioned, this is quite heavy on the squealing electric guitar solos with distorted organ and fuzzed-out minute-long passages of crashing "noise". Very few relaxing passages and very little of the pedal steel and acoustic Ennio Morriccone western style I was expecting. No horns. I wished a reviewer had made me aware of this.

Dreamlike and beautiful, this is a mature offering from the Friends. Bill Elms' liquid guitar lines create a mood that's languid and elastic, like a hot summer afternoon. Not a bad evolution for a band that originally formed with the intention of playing weddings.

The opening track, "A Place in the Sun," is elegant and lazy. "Siempre Que," a lovely, lyrical offering, is artfully peppered with subtle percussion. The CD overall is gorgeous and retains FODM's characteristic eerie howl, but I do kind of miss the rough exuberance that infused their first album.

In general: marvelous.

One of those cd's where you can imagine the non-existent movie that oughta come with sounds like these! Imagine Calexico sleeping with Ennio Morricone and using some weird drugs together, travelling to the Arizona/Texas desert and jamming together! By far the best Friends Of Dean Martinez cd so far and the first one where everything falls into place! Genius!

these guys know what they are doing. its the perfect music for driving through the desert on a horse with no name...just kidding, but it is a wonderful combination of southwestern twang and string quartet. its dreamy music.

Humid, dripping with tone and twang, like rain dripping from a cactus, these Friends aren't sure if they should set up camp, or drive through to find some surf. Heck, the desert used to be covered with water, why not stay for a night?

Excellent recording, sounds great on good hi-fi gear!

Transitioning from the loungy Burns/Convertino era to the melodic Semple era, this album (along with its immediate successor Wichita Lineman) represents the band's short-lived heavier phase. Despite a couple of gorgeous tracks ("When You're Gone" and "Broken Bell") A Place in the Sun comes across as a post-rock album, reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky. The opening and closing tracks tend to ramble a bit, forsaking their brilliant main theme. With too many composers, the album is a patchwork rather than a cohesive concept album, and a couple of tracks ("White Lake" and "Summertime") should have been left off entirely. Nevertheless, it's worth getting the album just for tracks 1, 4, 6, 8, and 11. It's worth getting for "Broken Bell" alone. That piece is an instant classic.

I listened to the samples of most all of these songs and they sounded like they were going to be good over all but I was very disappointed when I played it out. I did not like this CD at all.