Customer Reviews

Soft Explosives

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

 

 

this is the album of the year for my tastes...absolute delight..mix in parts of paddy macaloon-pre-fab sprout..a little paul mccartney..some parts of other melodic pop..fab lyrics...great hooky melodies...dense production..some trombones..a cool woman's duet vocal...really an c.d. that flows as a single unit..and has very exquisite pacing with the songs..ending with the "sound of love falling apart" which is a masterpiece... joe cassidy has taken huge leaps from the first c.d..this is a great artistic marriage of strong lyrics with twists..interesting hummable melodies with tons of hooks and a very lush..pet-sounds-high llamas production...

This is amazing. I perfer it to his eariler albums.

It's hard to compare it to anything. Perhaps if Mojave 3 decided to liven things up (a lot) and write their saddest effort in the vein of "Deserter's Songs" era Mercury Rev. Or if the Flaming Lips did a dead serious album (hard to imagine I know) that came across as meloncholy as Radiohead's "The Bends" and were a as melodic and strings oriented as a Moose album.

Seriously, it's that good, but if have a hang up with meloncholy or strings you will be as offended as the last reviewer -- sorry dude, I think you missed the point.

Honestly, I'm a fan of happy music (lots of lush pop, sweedish bands, indie dance and the like) but this is a real downer. This is not an everyday listen, but there are times where this album is perfect. I've had it a number of years and when I break it out it's bliss.

I hate to do this to Mr. Cassady who *is* Butterfly Child, and solitary writer of some of the most fantastic music of the 90's, but this album stinks. It's a tired-sounding song cycle loaded with pretentiously weepy string arrangements and carries none of the charm of his previous releases. Gone are the hopeful, buoyant lyrics and double-tracked high vocals. Gone are the jangly, strummy early Johnny Marr hooks. Gone are the dreamy swirly changes and exotic perky persussives. Instead you get treated to Belle and Sebastian on depressants and whiskey. Some may like that. If I want to get bummed out I'll listen to Killing Joke and Joy Division. In essence, a bad trip.
Buy Honeymoon Suite if you want the real BC and Onomatopoeia is you want your groove spiked with crazy psychedelia. (good luck finding the rare and magnificent out-of-print eps which took me years to acquire. Joe Cassady has since moved to Chicago and took up performing as a club act. There was a Butterfly Child web site up with four new and far more interesting songs, but that has since moved or disintegrated. Too bad. I would still buy anything this man has ever done based on the wild eccentricities of his previous releases. A genious fallen too early.