its been out for a while, i hadnt listened to it that much until last week and this week because it was on a different computer to my itunes and blah blah blah long story short, i just wasnt able to. but now that ive been on a weekend road trip and had it on my ipod on the way back.. imo a proper test for listening to music: watching scenery go by as you hear something new... theres something very pure about it.
so these are my collected initial thoughts about the album 4:13 Dream, now that ive heard it enough to have opinions...
♪♫ Underneath The Stars
i never liked it to begin with. its grown on me. its good for an opener, i definitely like it more than plainsong. but i always thought it kinda boring. however since hearing the album for a bit, ive decided it would make a fantastic "during sex" song. lol. and they sure are fans of that twinkly star chime sounds, aren't they? i cant think of anyone who uses that more than the cure that isnt, like, a new age band or anything... can you?
♪♫ Only One
my least favourite of the singles. i havent decided if thats because i dont actually like it or if its just that the other four singles are awesome. i still listen to it.... but for some reason i haven't got anything to say about it. next!
♪♫ Reasons Why
wonderfully catchy. poppy even. until you hear the word "suicide"... and it makes you go "arrrroooo??" (the sound scooby doo makes). this is reiterated by the NME article. and what robert says about it. but its good. if you dont listen to the words its a very upbeat song. and the fact that its a catchy tune makes me want to sing it a lot. both of these aspects i assume were on purpose as he wanted (i either read or interpreted this) it to be a positive song. this is one of my favourites so far. but curiousity still exists in this cat, since its from an actual factual letter, i want to know what on earth the actual factual reasons were. i love the last paragraph, rs managed to make the last four lines rhyme without using small words or making it sound strained. well done, dude.
♪♫ Freakshow
still my favourite single. of course i have been in love with it since i heard it. i pair it with "a sign from god" ... its got the same bouncy beat and bouncy vocals, the same kind of bouncy vocals that are also on 'da hype'... 'sign from god' is a bit more breathy perhaps? i will have to hear them together more. but the bass in this is fantastic.
♪♫ Sirensong
i pair this one with "down under" because they're both mermaidy ocean songs. for some reason i liked it more after i read it as an "acoustic waltz".. this will be obvious to music people i guess, but it wasnt to me.. perhaps it was just a "duh" moment. it is a good car song, it naturally goes with a journey. perhaps its the waltz pattern?... but lyrically, it is a favourite subject of mine; as a kid i always wondered what the sirens were supposed to have sounded like. i mean, i would think of it for myself, and then i was curious to know what the culture at the time would have thought they'd have sounded like. and i guess this is rs' version. makes quite a lot of sense, i love the lyrical narrative.
♪♫ Real Snow White
bizarre and wonderful. i am constantly trying to figure out exactly how the title describes his subject. there are two obvious snow white related lines that i can immediately right away, "seven ways to please" as in the number of dwarves (and 'minimum height'), and "hi-ho! she's off to work for time"... and with the opening line "you've got what i need" of course im going to think its either about sex or drugs. the snow = cocaine business makes me think the latter... but the seven dwarves stuff, well, we've all seen the porn (LOL) ......but for the life of me the actual correlation between the fairytale and its modern day context is still a mystery to me. perhaps it will unfold to me someday. however, simply as a song i find it incredibly catchy, i've had it stuck in my head a lot already. it contains another of my favourite lines of the album "i know the dress is tight, but it was all i had to wear".. lol. im not sure why i like it. or if its only because i had a 'been there before!' moment and a giggle to myself..
♪♫ Hungry Ghost
wonderful song! it has a little bit of everything. a little sombre element, very catchy and beautifully meaningful. and it contains one of my favourite lines from the album thus far - "measure time in leisure time and greed"... i love the kinda echoey feedbacky (is it? not really "feedback" though) guitar stuff (porl right?). and its mirrored lower sound that goes inbetween them. the "yeah" at the end, im not sure if its a good thing or a bad thing - good because its a staple of robert's and bad for the same reason. its one of those songs where i cant quite figure out how he wrote the rhythm of the rhyming pattern. like it doesnt look like it would work on paper to me but he sings it right and makes it work. perhaps i just dont know what im talking about, but im trying to learn.
♪♫ Switch
i like it. im not sure i can place why. i like the opening of drummy-machine type drums then real ones when you get to the song. of course carried through by porl's wonderful madness. i love all the little atmospheric tech sounds in the background. the vocals i cant decide if they are disintegration-esque or not. i tend to think so, i cant think of what other esque they would be. the bass is certainly disintegrationy, dont you think? is this another pseudo-'this is the end of my career' song or is it something else, i havent decided.
♪♫ Perfect Boy
i knew the words (or at least what i thought were the words) to this one before the single even came out, thats how much i listened to the bootlegs of it. its a great song to singalong to. i want to know what exactly a "laurel kismet hardy thing" is... i know kismet and i know laurel & hardy... but i dont know what they have to do with each other. i never liked the opening guitar by itself sound... but it totally works with the song. one point for godlike genius versus the music journalist amateur (me).
♪♫ This. Here and now. With you.
its about gigging, yeah? when i just knew the title, i thought "love song" (as in a love song, not the lovesong) but when i heard it for the first time during the rome thing, and after he said "that was a thishereandnowwithyou moment" i went "oooooooh." anyway, this is another of rs' songs thats so lyrically complicated in rhythm (for me anyway) that i have to properly work at reading it to sort out the beginings and endings of statements.... as in, the way its sung isnt the way the statements are broken up. (does that make sense?) ... then theres the quotations, i love robert's use of quotations in lyrics. the first set, (about "who i am" wink do we think that is his point of view or not? cos the second set, i could liken to being the POV of an audience member ( i know when i was at the front i certainly thought "im so up close to kissing you" wink ) and then there is another set of the first POV quotes. the paragraph after this, well im not sure. if you're a fan of slash, then the kissing could be of bandmates. would it be fans? its so far fetched that i cant even fathom, but who knows... in a song, it could be anything. then of course it could just plain be a lover. but again, if the song is indeed about gigs then it doesnt seem to fit with the whole thing. lets take the line "to make the most of tangency"... which i love because, well, i know what being tangent is, kind of, but i dont really think of it in that context... and whenever that happens i look it up in the dictionary, hopefully to learn something new. tangency's entry is
1. the state of being tangent; having contact at a single point or along a line without crossing
2. (electronics) a junction where things (as two electrical conductors) touch or are in physical contact; "they forget to solder the contacts" [syn: contact]
which i find interesting. because the whole line is "to make the most of tangency, i bite your mouth so fearfully"... so is that referring to just plain contact with the person being kissed. but then i think of music, gigs, electronics and conductors, and i wonder if it has a less literal meaning. but at this point i begin to get a headache and decide to step back a bit from the reading into songs. lol.
♪♫ Sleep When I'm Dead
one of the best ones on the album. another song thats proof of how awesome porl is. its hard to write about the singles either because they've been discussed the most or simply because im "used" to them now and im just getting to know the others. the sitary sound, another thing that makes me think KMKMKM (ala the snakepit). but the added backtrack of technoey "ticka ticka ticka" (lol do you have any idea what im talking about?) is great, especially during the chorus and especially witht the pre-echo of the vocal.. i love that pre-echo.
♪♫ Scream
this is the first one that i have begun to skip. its not that its bad. i just dont appreciate it as much as the others... i probably will one day. for me there isnt much to interpret so i assume its either kind of a filler song or its about stuff i couldnt possibly get from the words and the feel. the screamy element of it is remeniscent of KMKMKM, although im trying to sort out why i think that.. other than the fact that a lot of this album reminds me of KMKMKM. the tamborine is ala snakepit too, right?
♪♫ It's Over
i pair this song with "all kinds of stuff" because for me they are the two most uber-rock songs of the batch. although i have one disappointment from the live version vs the album version: the bass needs to be as up in the mix as it was on tour (or at least as up in the mix as it is in "all kinds of stuff" wink . its up in the begining but when the song comes in it seems to get quieter. the bass is one of the reasons i fell in love with this song and i was kinda sad to hear it so quiet in the final release. however, having said that. its still amazing and rocks super hard. its remeniscent of "shiver and shake," another KMKMKM comparison. perhaps its just porl. although the vocals are quite KMKMKM as well. i love when he goes down during "let me take you doooown"... that right there is teh sex. and the drums are fantastic, jason haters can suck my c**k.
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and its here that i cant decide if i should include the bsides or not
♥ what i think of it overall..
well to put it in context, for me the most important turning point is clearly when rs first recorded the Glove. the vocals are so completely different to what he'd done before, and he's said that the Top wouldnt have happened if he couldn't do the Glove... that it seemed to lay the foundation for a lot of what was to come. and i can hear quite a lot of similarities between what i love about those first glove vocals and those on this album. and as ive been saying, there are many common threads with Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. and a few with Disintegration. it ranges from poppy to hard to dancable to completely and utterly mellow, and everything inbetween. typical awesome range from the Cure, but somehow turned up a little. i am confident enough in the album to be so presumptuous as to describe it as an "instant classic".. and to think this is the light half of the stuff they've been working on. to think that this awesomeness isnt over and will only continue...um... whenever they decide to release it. (SOON YES PLZ KTHX)
siouxxxsie Community Member 
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