Customer Reviews

Taller You Are

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let this be your first My Dad is Dead album. This is where it all started for me. I'm 44 and I've finally found an artist that I can call my favorite by far! For recent works, try, no, buy "For Richer, For Poorer". 100% unconditionally guaranteed PERIOD! BUY THIS!

I do not know if this is my Fave MDID record, but this is probably the best one to start with and if you are a fan, you should own it. Every song on it is wrapped with intense angst-ridden lyrics delivered in such a consistently beautiful manner that you really are left hoping that this tortured sould finds a girlfriend and cheers up. I am deeply saddened that there is not a more current review. I have met the artist at a show in MPLS and he seemed as cool and approachable as his music.

(There are more than 3 songs - it's quite a long CD, actually)

MDID (Mark Edwards) writes some incredibly deep lyrics, which he lays over music so basic and simple, you wonder why no one has thought of it before! Very clean and refreshing tunes - not murked-up with a bunch of extra crap. DIY rock at its absolute finest.

This is my favorite My Dad is Dead album. Every song is great!

I've owned this double LP since the mid-'90s, about the time I discovered My Dad Is Dead. I stumbled upon it the other night, going through my collection and looking for cool stuff I hadn't listened to in a long while. So I put the vinyl on and cranked it. About midway through side 2 (of 4) the revelation hit that this album is something very special. It's most assuredly MDID's masterpiece -- 1995's "For Richer, For Poorer" may hit higher highs but they're sporadic -- but this is much more than that.
"The Taller You Are..." is an epic concept album in league with "Quadrophenia," "The Wall," "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," (insert your favorite touchstone here). It's a sprawling diary of a despondent loner spilling his guts, and the result is at once painful, cathartic and celebratory. And there's not a wasted moment in its 80-plus minutes (not sure of the running time but I was unable to burn this onto one CD, and there was not one track I could force myself to omit).
Mark Edwards was years and years ahead of his time in 1989 -- and you can hear the post-millennial, minor chord-drenched angst of Interpol et al. being birthed right before your ears -- only done the right way. The lyrics, by turns introspective, insightful and often darkly comical, will keep you thinking, while the aural assault of chiming guitars, pulsing bass lines and pounding drums should rock any preconceived notions out the window. This is a criminally overlooked gem.

Some of his song topics are depressing, or even terrifying, but in the end, "The Taller You Are, the Shorter You Get" is a beautiful piece of art.

My Dad is Dead's one-man proprietor, Mark Edwards, sits out on the fire escape of life and looks out from his tenement at the human parade, feeling pity without the slightest hint of condescension.

Most of these songs are about the terrifying emotional situations that most people occasionally find themselves in.

Rather than singing with the aloof voice of a saint, Edwards sounds like someone who recently finished living through whatever he's singing about. His songs, by implication, are icy cold advice for others caught up in the same trap; there is no moralizing. A lot of his material is straight off of the psychiatrist's couch, but it never takes on the masturbatory tone that often detracts from that type of songwriting. Edwards' stark, gripping portraits of power struggles within relationships ("Seven Years", "The Only One", "The Big Picture", "Boundaries") are alone worth the price of admission, but they merely scratch the surface of his astounding talent for analyzing humanity.

Again and again, in his songs, he tackles thorny human-interest types of problems that reduce the average person to blind stammering or pure denial, and zeroes in on the real issues that are at the heart of what is wrong. He does it with an absolute minimum of either verbiage or sentiment. Again and again, he dead-centers the bullseye, writing his initials with the bullet holes.

He somehow pulls all of this off without sounding arrogant or angry in the slightest, which is probably the most awesome achievement of all.

"The Taller You Are, the Shorter You Get" is an easy ten out of ten. There's not a single bad song here, and the instrumentals are as eloquent as poems. After all of the years I've owned this album, I only need to hear the first few notes of the leadoff track "For Lack of a Better Word" and there's a physiological chain reaction for me. My blood runs cold; I shiver, go short of breath, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Uh...yeah...it ~is~ THAT authentic.

There are thousands of good rock albums that have been issued over the last forty years, but Mark Edwards' 1989 effort stands as one of the very best. If this review speaks to you, please go and buy the album as fast as you can. Listen to it a few times and you'll understand why I'm writing to you in this way.

i really like this band. and i think that Interpol (another newer band i really really like) sounds more like this band then they sound like Joy Division (which most people compare Interpol to). but yes My Dad Is Dead is heavily influenced by Joy Division too. all 3 of the bands mentioned are great. all different enough too and they are all important and one doesn't make the other obsolete.

Good record, yeah. Buy it. But I have a question - what's with the name of the band? I can "get" whacky band names just as well as the next guy, but why such a stupid, cryptic phrase? Could be worse, I hear somehwhere out there there's a band with a name something like "They'll Know Us From the Trail of the Dead We Leave Behind" or something like that. A band name is supposed to either make a point or have some kind of impact or instant recognizeability. "My Dad Is Dead" just seems to say "I'm an emotional little boy, hurt by the world and all alone, please feel my pain." I mean, heck, my dad is dead, too, but I don't go out there in the world saying "Hi, nice to meat you, my dad is dead." Or "Excuse me, sir, do you have the time, and by the way, I'm sad and lonely." You just don't do it. They could have at least named themselves "Dead Daddy" or something, something a little active instead of something so passive and whiney. I won't even tell people that this is music I like, because I don't wanna say it. It's too much to say and doesn't even sound like a band name.
"So, dude, what music ya listening to these days?"
"Oh, My Dad is Dead."
"Man, sorry to hear that, but what are you listening to?"
"I told you, "My Dad Is Dead."
"Yeah, sorry to hear that, but what's in your CD player these days?"
"MY DAD IS DEAD!"
"Sheesh, man, what do you want, a hug or something?! Get over it already!"
See? It all just ends up as some bad rendition of an Abbott & Costello bit. BAD BAND NAME, dudes. May I suggest a name change? How 'bout Corey & The Weasels? The Mudrakers? The Portents? The Finaglers? The Storks? Trichinosis? The Fuzzbusters? The Chokin' Chikens? The Whoremongers? Bustin' Caps? Charlie and the Stevedores? Almost anything would be better than My Dad Is Dead. Might as well call yourselves "I'm Looking For My Car Keys" or something. Someone needs to teach these kids something about marketing.