Big Decisions discussions

[MusiKel Mama]

As long as one is under the pretext that a "big decision" must be made, will the waterfall ever stop? It either is, or is not...there is no big decision.

[Stevie]

From one of the people who attended the listening party, regarding the lyrics to "The Waterfall (In it's Infancy)":

I stop the waterfall by finally feeling / I stop the waterfall by just believing / I gotta stop the waterfall.

[MusiKel Mama]

That is the most beautiful mantra ever...

[Stevie]

Reminds me of Jim talking about being in "the zone," and how he strives to "be in the zone as much as possible." 

[slappymoe]

I got into the band in 03 and marveled at how I loved every song they released until evil urges came out. I have liked some songs since but their new stuff just doesn't do it for me.

i strongly disagree about evil urges.......i think it's an incredible album, with songs that stand with the group's best.

but i was VERY disappointed with most of circuital, and big d hasn't done much for me yet.

to me, it felt like the first 5 albums were filled with songs that were programmed into jim's dna at birth, beautiful, inspired tunes that were in him all along and needed to come out. circuital felt more like someone saying to himself, "well, i'm a songwriter, guess i need to write some songs." so far, big d feels the same to me. not terrible, but not up to the lofty standards set by his earlier work.

even the greatest have their dry spells.  i'll use a couple of my all-time favorites as examples. paul mccartney is the most successful songwriter ever, but from the early 80's on it was hit or miss, mostly miss. now into his 70's, i think his last few albums are absolutely fantastic. pete townshend wrote some of rock's most brilliant, powerful songs.  now even he will admit he hasn't been able to write a great song for a long, long time. it just can't be forced. it's either in you, or it's not, imo.

i am optimistic that the rest of the waterfall will show jim is back to his songwriting best. guess i'll find out monday night!

[Brother Beck]

I understand where you are coming from.  The best way I can put it is that some of their songs are just absolutely magical in a powerful way.  Dondante is a transcendent beast.  I feel like their earlier albums were more stacked with these types of songs, so that feeling stayed with you over the course of the entire album. 

Now take Circuital for example - I like almost every song on that album, but there are really only two that stand out in my mind as hitting that level of sheer epic amazingness.  The rest of the songs to me are just like catchy fun songs.  I don't think it's really fair to expect someone to hit that level of greatness with every release, but the flip side to that would be that I also think it's perfectly human that as fans who know what he's capable of we hope for that every time.

Which all leads to how to me the only real disappointment is how long we have to wait between output from them.  Highly Suspicious is a song from them that I don't like very much.  I see how it can be enjoyable to people but it just doesn't work for me.  I only bring this up to say that I would still think it was awesome if they did an entire album of songs in that crazy style and I would definitely listen to it and give it a chance, but I have to admit I would be bummed out knowing that if at the end of the day I still wasn't crazy about it, it would be another four years before we heard anything else. 

[justbcuzido]

I understand where you are coming from.  The best way I can put it is that some of their songs are just absolutely magical in a powerful way.  Dondante is a transcendent beast.  I feel like their earlier albums were more stacked with these types of songs, so that feeling stayed with you over the course of the entire album. 

Now take Circuital for example - I like almost every song on that album, but there are really only two that stand out in my mind as hitting that level of sheer epic amazingness.  The rest of the songs to me are just like catchy fun songs.  I don't think it's really fair to expect someone to hit that level of greatness with every release, but the flip side to that would be that I also think it's perfectly human that as fans who know what he's capable of we hope for that every time.

Which all leads to how to me the only real disappointment is how long we have to wait between output from them.  Highly Suspicious is a song from them that I don't like very much.  I see how it can be enjoyable to people but it just doesn't work for me.  I only bring this up to say that I would still think it was awesome if they did an entire album of songs in that crazy style and I would definitely listen to it and give it a chance, but I have to admit I would be bummed out knowing that if at the end of the day I still wasn't crazy about it, it would be another four years before we heard anything else.

Well good thing they have another album dropping in Spring of 2016 as well as a Jim James solo record.

[kotchishm]

Should someone make a thread about the leak to keep info contained so that people don't read things they are trying to avoid?

[getinthevan]

Should someone make a thread about the leak to keep info contained so that people don't read things they are trying to avoid?

Every time anyone has tried to, it gets deleted...

[kotchishm]

Should someone make a thread about the leak to keep info contained so that people don't read things they are trying to avoid?

Every time anyone has tried to, it gets deleted...

Figured it had been mentioned but I wasn't on here over the weekend. Well hopefully someone can set something up that sticks