A while back you and some other guys in entertainment made a thread about bands that should be mainstream, but aren't. I'm looking to make another version of that. Do you think you'd be able to participate?

Seriously! I miss when you used to butt dial me all the time <3

KAYYYYYY <3 but I miss you moar xP

NUUUUUUU I MISS YEW!

<3 Quack.

my deluxe edition of the album finally arrived yesterday! along with all the goodies it comes with two b-sides from the record and ooooohhhh they're just as good as anything on the album.

I got it from here, but I don't know if the links are still active.

Nine Stories is definitely one of my favourite tracks. The verse melody is absolutely flawless and a total ear-worm, I go to sleep and wake up with it in my head five days out of the week. The lyrics work perfectly with the melody, the word choice is outstanding. There's probably at least a half-dozen examples I could give, but my favourite is probably "What from the air calls to water on the land, what from my seclusion does this charlatan demand? What to do now with my best-laid eremitic plans?" It's just a perfect melody that seems to build, but never actually really explodes before it goes into the chorus...and then the "I wake up disappointed every time" transition to that out-of-left-field outro...god. I don't know if there's a better pair of lines than "If the weather ever withers up your vine, Jacob knows a ladder you can climb" and "If the pleasures of your heaven ever end, that very ladder just as well descends."

Bear's Vision may be the most heart-wrenching song they've ever done. The band did a Daytrotter session that I downloaded where they do Bear's Vision, East Enders Wives (another great song, read this and dream about how awesome it would be if he did it for every song on the album/he's written), Aubergine and The Angel of Death Came to David's Room and it's a great version of the song, though I miss the horns.

nice! It's such a fantastic album. I don't know if I could place it over Brother, Sister either, because that was my first so it'll always be important and special (and let's face it, it's an incredible album), but I have a hard time finding any flaw with Ten Stories either.

Aubergine is probably the weakest song on the album, though there are still things I love about it (I love the grove of the guitar slides, and the verse melody is great, and there's some great lines). It and Cardiff Giant were the two that it took more time for me to get into, and Aubergine is still one I skip a few times when I'm listening to the album, but I think it's because I'm impatient to get to Fox's Dream.

How about that Fiji Mermaid outro, though???

Just on the art thread. Listening to music. Bored out of my mind.

What's up?

I'm with ya. If I was pressed to name just one. single. band. to call a favourite, I'd most likely say them because of the same reasons. There's plenty of bands and lyricists that have made me think differently about music but mwY is the only band that ever made me think differently about my life. And yeah, it definitely helps that they are such good songwriters and musicians all around. I actually recently found an instrumental-only version of Ten Stories and I'm excited to check that out. They've got a great sound on top of Aaron's lyrics, and of course his vocal delivery is also one of my favourite thing about that band (...seemingly every detail is one of my favourite things about the band).

I definitely agree, and I think it's because Aaron uses his faith in such an interesting way. It's not all about praise and worship the way a lot of other contemporary christian or faith-based music is, he just as often writes about his conflicts with his faith and how it's both helped and hindered him...and he just manages to make it so relatable. I'm not very religious or spiritual, but mwY's music always is able to make me get introspective about my life and philosophies because of how well he is able to articulate his own experiences with those kinds of things.

I think that's where most of my love for his lyrics on Catch For Us the Foxes comes from, because it's such a hard-hitting album when it comes to those kind of lyrical themes. For every line he writes about finding God or taking comfort in the teachings of various scripture, there's one that details the struggle of searching for inner peace and clarity that I think most people constantly strive for regardless if they have religious belief or not.

siily

another thing I love about Aaron's lyricism is his wordplay he throws in from time to time. The Fox, The Crow, and the Cookie has the great "Every rook and jay in the corvidae's been 'raven' about me too." and there's a fantastic one on the song Fiji Mermaid off Ten Stories ("Maybe there'll be a bakery hiring, we'll knead a little bit of dough to get by."), which is an awesome four-level pun.

If you listen to Fox and Crow, and listen to the little instrumental backings during the verse and breaks, the instruments add a lot of texture as well, sort of a pseudo "Peter and Wolf" esque way, if you're familiar with that piece of music. It's probably just be the way I'm interpreting it and wasn't intentional on the part of the band, but during the first verse I always associate the tuba with the baker, and the violin I tend to associate with the fox as "characters."

Listening to Aaron talk about how various faiths and stories have influenced his lyrics is always so fascinating. I read an interview recently where he talks about how he had this crisis where he felt it "wrong" that he was doing something so attention-grabbing as performing on stage, but using faith and belief to fuel such a selfish desire, but he managed to reconcile it by admitting performing was something he loved to do, and how could getting so much joy out of something like that be a bad thing.

There's a lot less faith-based and religious based stuff on Ten Stories (though there is some), and I think less so from a personal place for him. But some of the ideas he expresses on one or two of the tracks (particularly Fox's Dream of the Log Flume, which may be my favourite song the band has ever done) have these very philosophical roots that have faith-based tints to them ("I don't know if I know, though some with certainty insist no certainty exists," and "By now I think it's pretty obvious that there's no god, and there's definitely a god!")

I stared at your avvy and sig for way longer than I should have, lol.

His use of language as a lyricist is what gets me, and makes me adore his words whether they are describing his own angst or just telling the story of a train crash ("As Elephant addressed the frightened animal car, 'let's return now to the dust, as the dust we are! Tonight our bridal fate the hour's come to consummate." And drove her massive body like a truck into the iron bars. Limestone thrown from out the hopper's back; Ash Cat tossed against the diamond stack; cradle to caboose, the frozen bolts broke loose, sent that cage spinning like a dreidel off the icy tracks!"). Of course, it helps that his delivery is outstanding as well.

King Beetle is probably the best song in terms of arrangement on the album, though I also love the way the various instruments play the "characters" in The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie...and the arabic-like chanting at the end of The Angel of Death gives me shivers.

I think Brother, Sister will always be my favourite as well, but Ten Stories is giving it a run for it's money at this point...though that could be because of the newness of it, it's hard to say. But it's the perfect culmination of the sounds they created on Brother, Sister and Catch For Us the Foxes, but also incorporating the more melodic style of IACIAFIAADIA, and is even more lyrically in line with the latter since it's basically a series of stories and less "personal" than their previous stuff.

The big outro on King Beetle is incredible. Those crescendo moments that are all over It's All Crazy are a big part of why I love that album.

because they're incredible. I'm going to go into a happiness coma when my deluxe edition of Ten Stories finally shows up. they may just be my favourite band ever, at this point. my love for them as only grown over the five years I've been listening to them.

Thank you for eloquently saying what I couldn't put into words for some reason in the Sexism Against Men thread.

Feminism is ridiculous.