Has anyone picked it up? What do they think? Personally, it reminds me a lot of Mike's work on MAC (hear me out!). It's the same old awesome DCFC, but they're quite consciously trying something new, trying to progress. There's a lot of special effects everywhere (bouncing delay, phasers on vocals, etc), electronics, textures, atmospherics, etc, much in the same way that Mike was trying out pencil shading techniques, digital placement/zooming, etc.

Heck, the lyrics are even much more positive, just like how Frank is much more 'with it' and 'together' than before.

Underneath it all, though, is some very good, very effective pop. The songs themselves actually remind me of blank canvas, upon which are meant to hang all these new sonic experiments, like an impressionist painting or something. If you were to strip them down to bare-bones acoustic versions, I'm not sure they could stand up against stripped down versions of songs from any of their other albums...but again, that isn't the point. The point is all the succesful experiments with percussion, electronics, effects, etc, that mark a wonderful, return-to-brand-new-form for the band. I think they pulled off what they were going for very well, and ended up with a much stronger album than their previous effort, Narrow Stairs.

didn't even realize it was out! thanks for the info. i got it off Amazon for $5!

-josh