An Album I Should Have Bought Years Ago

Posted by brame.

I recently stumbled upon a huge music sale that included old Tooth and Nail cd’s for as low as five bucks. Given the oppurtunity I thumbed through the mass of crap to find that some of it was actually worth my time and money. Apparently compact discs such as As Cities Burn, Joy Electric, Haste the Day, andmewithoutYou are worth no more than a few dollars profit. Anyways, I continued to flip through I’d say atleast five hundred cd’s to find about 20 T & N cd’s in a row.

Now, I bought the new mewithoutYou the day it came out (October 5, 2004). I thought it was the most genius thing I’d ever heard at the time. Since then I’ve listened to more artists similar to their “genre” (such as Tiger Bear Wolf). I contemplated buying the old one, “[A --> B] Life,” multiple times. But! when I would stumble upon it in Best Buy, it would cost $14.99 or whatever insane price the store decided to slap on it. Plus, I had only heard two songs off thecd (“Gentlemen” and “Bullet to Binary”) and the latter song I was not very thoroughly impressed with.

Enough with the not so recent past and let’s jump forward to July, 18 2006 or the day I found “[A --> B] Life” on sale for $6.99. I don’t know why but I immediately grabbed it thinking “They can’t be frickin’ serious. Six dollars and ninety nine cents.” Oh, but they were serious. Very serious. I preceded to buy a few others as well. Most impressive of course is this “antique” mewithoutYou record I was so oddly excited about. I brought it home and listened to it twice through without stopping and thought to myself, “Why didn’t I buy this two years ago”? I’ll tell you why: it cost as much as a bottled water in Venezuela. Venezuela aside, I like this album better than “Catch For Us the Foxes.” Why? Well, I’ll tell you.

One, it’s raw. It doesn’t sound overproduced and as studio quality as the second record. It sounds as if they’ve recorded the record in a garage or storage unit. Songs like “Silencer” hold the bass that I loved on “Leaf” from “Catch For Us the Foxes,” but add a grungey (?) guitar effect and catchy hum in the background vocals. Don’t get me wrong, the second album has it’s raw flavor but nothing like the crunchy tone of the instruments in “[A --> B] Life.”

Second, the album art is sweet. A matter of opinion, yes, but be it that I nearly never download music, an album with good artwork is a necessity. And to be brutally honest, I tire of these new-fangled, no artwork, cardboard, oversize pieces of crap. (Yeah, stop doing that Morrissey). Enough about Morrissey though (he sucks), I like the basic two-fold layout they use and the color scheme, it is enough to be satisfying and not overbearing. Still no album art will top either of the “O’ God the Aftermath” releases.Original and Deluxe

The final feature that I believe tops “Catch For Us the Foxes” is the flow of the songs and the energy in the music. “Foxes” tends to put me to sleep. This endeavor however obviously has been created by the same Aaron Weiss who guest-starred in “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste.” Here’s to you, past Aaron Weiss, I commend you on your past album and hope everyone that reads this will go buy it as well as the new record “Brother, Sister” on September 26, 2006.