Flower Kings Appreciation Thread

I have finally decided to do my collab duty and review all the TFK albums. Expect my TSONE review soon.

Roland, I just know that either you, or someone else, has done the album rankings and split
discs 1 and 2 of Flower Power up because of how good Garden of Dreams is.
But now I understand your intent 

darkshade wrote: CCVP wrote: darkshade wrote: Roland113 wrote: Oh, you're not alone in your love for Paradox.  It's my favorite by them. Currently, I'd put Banks of Eden at number 4: 1)  Paradox Hotel 2)  Unfold the Future 3)  Space Revolver 4)  Banks of Eden 5)  Retropolis 6)  Stardust We Are 7)  Garden of Dreams 8)  Sum of No Evil 9)  The Flower King 10)  The Rainmaker 11)  Back in the World of Adventures 12)  Adam and Eve Where would the rest of Flower Power go? We all know that the second disc is quite weak and drags the album down in everybody's list. I've grown to really enjoy disc 2 of Flower Power, as the ranking of the album has gone up for me. Once I got over the fact that Garden of Dreams is the best thing the band has ever done (and oddly view GoD as the first track of this giant album), I began to appreciate disc 2 a lot more. I think Stardust We Are's second disc really brings the album down, especially after Don of The Universe. The title track at the end saves it of course.

Epignosis wrote: Why is it that Paradox Hotel is so disliked?

CCVP wrote: We all know that the second disc is quite weak and drags the album down in everybody's list.

Nov wrote: CCVP wrote: We all know that the second disc is quite weak and drags the album down in everybody's list. Speak for yourself  There is some fabulous stuff on that disk but it just originally got over-shadowed by GoD and fans treated as some kind of bonus disk. I totally agree that FP should have been released as two separate albums a few months apart. The opinion of disk 2 would then be completely different as people would have been able to absorb the material far easier without feeling over-whelmed by it all (which is certainly how I felt at the time).

zumacraig wrote: wow, stardust 4 stars.  you're crazy!  i can understand that though.  even though it is a double with a bit of filler, i think it really hangs together as the stardust theme shows up in a bunch of songs.

It's really just all the songs after Don of the Universe through Ghost of the Red Cloud that, if omitted, would have made SWA a 5 star album. Those are the poppier songs, no Stardust theme, etc. I like TFK's poppier songs, but I don't care for those, or maybe it's the placement. I can get through the other 3 double albums just fine, but that 20 minute section of the second disc of SWA tries my patience sometimes. Disc 1 is a five star album alone.

Guess I should weigh in here:

Paradox Hotel is a fine album that I enjoy when I'm in the mood.  To this day I just can not get into Monsters & Men, and I've heard it (and the rest of the album) probably a hundred times.  The rest of the album I mostly love, or like a lot.

Adam & Eve is probably still my least favorite, though it has a couple songs I really like, my favorite of which is A Vampire's View.  The two epics just don't work very well, to my ears.  The melodies on the first one grate on me (too cheesy), the second one seems too disjointed.  Anyway, just my feeling on it.

Both albums I like, with A&E being a low 3 stars and Paradox a high 3 stars (very close to 4).

Stardust We Are is great, though I agree about the low point on disc 2.  Personally, I still like it all well enough, but Different People and Kingdom of Lies bring it down for me.  I like the little interludes on mixed in there though, even A Day At The Mall.  Ghost Of The Red Cloud is a good pseudo-Reggae song, and I love Hotel Nirvana as an ambient intro to the title epic.

CD 2 of Flower Power has long been my least favorite CD of Flower Kings tunes, only A&E knocked it out of that spot (and I go back and forth with them).  Like A&E, there are songs on that second CD that I really like, but I just find that overall, it's not a very satisfying listen, and doesn't flow nearly as well as other CD's by TFK's.  Deaf, Numb, and Blind is a great song though, as is the Psychedelic Postcard / Hudson River Siren's Call pairing.  I actually like Afterlife too, as it's a great coda with themes from GoD to give the album a full circle feel.

Basically, as I've mentioned here before, I like all of their albums.  It's just a matter of how much.  A&E and CD2 of Flower Power I like a whole lot less than Retropolis, Unfold the Future, or BoE (as examples of albums that I think are fantastic in every way).  I still need to listen more to BoE, but I can tell it's going to be up there on my favorites list.  The Flower Kings have been my favorite band for 13 years now, and this was true even when A&E came out and I thought they might be loosing it (I can't express how disappointed I was when I heard that, after the amazing Unfold......it took a couple years to even be able to evaluate it on its own merits and put that disappointment aside.....and I can't say I ever really put it aside totally).  So really, all the albums are my favorites.  Just some resonate more with me than others, but all are good to great albums.

infandous wrote: [ Sorry, I have to disagree with you.  I imagine MP3's you buy on line are high enough quality to not sound much different from the quality of the CD, but I still prefer the hard copy, uncompressed.  Packaging is important to me also.  While some albums packaging seems like an afterthought, that is not the case with TFK albums (or most prog albums really).  I guess growing up in the days of vinyl LP's, I just always have to have that packaging to fondle and look at.  I really have to have the lyrics to reference as well (though of course, those can usually be found on line and be reasonably accurate).  In any case, I have never bough a download and probably never will, unless they become the only way to get music in the future. (I have had many albums downloaded for free from various bands websites legally, and a number of albums sent to my by friends in MP3 format for me to try out.......or, in the case of the Flower Kings, for me to hear prior to release.......though that was just when a friend of mine was helping out with the band in the past, and I always bought the CD when it came out)

Well, so far, Banks of Eden is my most played 2012 album, beating The Mars Volta, Flying Colors, OHMphrey, Lettuce, Rush, and Tribal Tech. So we'll see...

Edited by darkshade - July 09 2012 at 15:01