LCTWWM, Worst Prefab Album To Date: Discuss

Timofathens - maybe you need to cut down on the beershakes, and instead try a meatshake? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv6Mljf830c

all i can say is...let there be music

Good post, Timon, although you seem to be locating the drama and tension in Paddy's psyche rather than in the music itself. You're right about contemporary Christian music being watered down, which is the same problem I find with LCTWWM. I'd say that the problem isn't so much that the tension is resolved too quickly or neatly, more that there's no real sense of tension established in the first place. Everyone knows Wagners Tristan And Isolde - which was built on a technique whereby the harmonies never fully resolved - and when there was an implied resolution it was orgasmic. And Gospel music was always highly sexually charged, all the bodies longings sublimated into intense praise and joy.

Rae - what you find dull in the lyrics I see reflected in the music itself. On the evidence of the album, is Paddy really wrestling with anything? Whatever these themes may mean to him personally they just sound like grist for his songwriting mill.

right,
JJ.
i located the tension in his psyche,
not the music.
it's about halfway down the post.

Ahh yes, the bit whereby you find that Paddy's divergent interests are reflected in his latter work in general, but pressumably not to be found in any one album.

I'm glad to see this topic on the forums - there's not enough objectivity on the site for my liking. Surely everyone reading this post has had to either justify their enjoyment of some of the most precious pop music since 1964 or hide their enjoyment of same.

I had a lot of the same misgivings around the new album as the original poster, and I even posted a couple of cautious reviews on the site right after it was released, but I eventually succumbed to its gossamer charms.

Bottom line, I can commiserate with all of the song-by-song nit-picking, but at the end of the day, the new record fits firmly into the PS songbook, and the individual songs each reveal themselves as natural extensions of the Prefab Sprout canvas - as insightful and heartfelt as anything else Paddy has done.

Cheesy and under-produced, for the most part? Maybe. Life-affirming and ridiculously re-playable? Hellz yeah.

Cheers.

Jesse, I agree with most of what you're saying in this thread but I think you're barking up the wrong tree with the idea that the music on the album isn't sufficiently emotive or dynamic in relation to the content of the lyric. The song 'Sweet Gospel Music' is not trying to be gospel music, the song is asking some other unheard music to lift the narrator up. I think this is Paddy acknowledging that he would feel like a fake if he tried writing in the idiom. There is a theme running through PS in which Paddy writes from the perspective of their being an other more authentic music out there that he can't touch. The Paris Smith lyric, One of the Broken, even I Love Music which seems to draw together artists who have a more visionary and radical approach than Paddy. The place that Paddy has made for himself is of a writer trapped in the post-modern age unable to reach the authentic music of times passed. His effervescent pop is his only response.

Apologies if this has been gone over before, thisi is a long thread and I didn't have time to read it all.

That's an interesting point, James. It also comes up in Anne Marie: "I hear strange music in undiscovered keys/whenever you're near."

Don't read the entire thread. Kev provided a nice summary somewhere betwenn pp. 19 and 23. I think.

This view blows my mind. Taking into consideration this is a PREFAB SPROUT website and all that implies; I think there has been an even handed view covering most opinions of LCTWWM. The fact that most people here are fans of PS explains the large majority of postive (even with misgivings) reviews. I wonder if those critical of the "objectivity" here go on BBS' elsewhere. Fanaticism, fanboism and whatever else you want to call it is alive and RAMPANT on the Web. The kind here is mild at worst.

What are people expecting when they come here? A Paddy bitch session?
Let Change Paddys Mind With Negativity?

There are plenty of people who post valid reasons why they feel LCTWWM is below par, or point out Paddy's misgivings and mistakes etc. If you OBJECTIVELY look at the threads and posts that receive the most heat/backlash; you'd have to admit it's the ones that present the poster's opinion with vitriolic, disrespectful tones, words and phrases 98% of the time.

+1 on that!

Hurrah ! Could not have been said any better in a nutshell , thanks.

it might be schmaltzy in places, and intensely bothering of god - but i can't help for falling for at least 4 or 5 of these tracks

oh an hi

welcome aboard,
u.
so,
which 4 or 5 tracks in particular?