THE EARTH IS NOT A COLD DEAD PLACE

Hold on... don't get mad about the two stars already, I'll try to explain. I had to search deep inside, both intellectually and mentally, to find enough reasons why this album shoud recieve two stars, instead of one. I know this band is one of the new darlings, but just stay with me.

If I wouldn't remind myself, time after time, to give this album another chance in the cd-player I would just forget about it completely (forget that I have bought it and forget that I have ever listened to it). That's how much impression it makes on me. I try to stay focused when listening, but when I look at the time counter on the cd-player I realize that the music has passed me by once again, without any notice. And to me that doesn't make a good album. This anonymity makes it also quite hard to make comments about individual tracks.

I think this album is a rather good representative for the "experimental/post rock", but I won't go into talking too much about this as a genre. I wonder, can you imagine this music go on without change for another five years? I can, and that's what bothers me (I would be glad if I was proved wrong in the next couple of years). This album shows no signs of experimentalism, and these guys don't just play it safe, this album is as stable as a concrete rock. And what I would want it to be is the opposite, that it would be going somewhere, that the album would show signs of curiousity, that it would make a statement, that it would make any difference what so ever during these minutes it's played. But, no. If this album should represent the "new direction" of prog I just can't see the direction in the first place, because this one stands still.

I understand though that one of the intentions with this is to make a "sensitive" or "subtle" impression, but I say that there has to be more to good music than this. I mean, the "subtlety" is usually just one dimension of a good album. The music has to have more depth, more sides to it than only be sensitive in general. If I should explain why the album doesn't do anything for me, probably that is one explanation.

As you may have figured out I wouldn't recommend this album, since it's boring. But I believe that to recieve a single star you have to make an album that's beyond boring, so 2 stars it is.