An Early Arrival!
Glen Phillips - Winter Pays For Summer
Ooops, apparently my calculations were a little off! Glen Phillips' new album is already available on Rhapsody. Perhaps they are slowly getting back to making new releases available first thing in the morning on Tuesday morning. Anyway, now you can see if you agree with all my blabbering about this album this past month. It's also available on iTunes and, of course, you can buy the CD itself from Amazon. All links below! Enjoy!
posted by Chris at 3/29/2005 09:26:00 AM
Comments (4)
4 Comments:
You know, I'm actually a little disappointed with the album, and it's not Glen's fault - I blame producer John Fields' sappy and synthetic production. I heard a couple demos ("Courage" & "Easier") that blow away the final product, which is unfortunate, because the songwriting is top-notch. I see that Jon Brion makes a guest appearance - I hope Glen uses that experience to tap him to produce his next album...either that or he does it himself (ala the demos.)
Then again, I'm probably a production-snob and should just get over it.
Well, to be fair, I am sure that both Glen and Lost Highway Records had a bit to do with the production results. Glen had already recorded an entire album's worth of stuff with the extraordinary David Garza but scrapped it all because he was not happy with it. Some of the demos you probably heard were from those sessions. He then went back into the studio with John and along the way struck a deal with Lost Highway who apparently wanted him to do a few things to the album as well.
I personally like the end results. I think it provides a great bridge between the Toad sound of the past and his more organic, mature sound now. Keep in mind that I was a complete Toad freak back in my HS/college days... While I love his acoustic only offerings since it proves his amazing songwriting skills, I love his more fleshed out sound. Like the sound in "Cleareyed" which is so full with so little instrumentation. Love the production of the drums...
Anyway, let's just all agree that we're happy that Ethan Johns didn't produce this one after butchering the Mutual Admiration Society disc.
Thanks for the comments. Love discussing this stuff.
Here's an article about the recording process for this album which explains the whole thing better than I did/can.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=726
chris
Again, I freely admit to being a production snob, so when I see (in the link you provided) that Glen wanted an XTC English Settlement and Peter Gabriel So type sounds, I have to think something got lost on John "Strawberry" Fields, because I don't hear it.
That being said, I do like "Duck and Cover", "Thankful", "Cleareyed" and "Half Life". It may take awhile for me to have the patience to get through the others as my 'skip' reflex is awfully strong on them.
I too was a Toad head back in the day... I wish I could claim it was in high school, but I'm too old to pull that off ;)
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