10.22
I picked up the album “Earthly Delights” about a week ago. I’ve been mulling the album over since, it’s just about all I’ve listened to, and I’d have to say:
5 stars.
As usual they prove to be an acquired taste, easily mistaken for aural insanity. With this album however I think they firmly prove why they should not be dismissed as “noise”. The music has further evolved from previous releases.
A few things stuck out immediately, the production quality on this release is a little bit lower than Hypermagic Mountain, but the result suits them just as well, and in fact works greatly to their favor on songs such as “The Sublime Freak” which sounded like raw energy encased in an early Guided By Voices recording.
The treat we’re given on this album is a bit more vocal work than on previous albums. There are some really great melodies working together in songs like “Nation of Boar”, “Colossus”, “The Sublime Freak” and “Rain on the lake I’m Swimming In”.
In my opinion the songs on this album should be listented to as a sort of textures, I’ve always loved Lightning Bolt because by not giving you anything to directly focus on, you are free to just imagine whatever the music makes you think of at the time, the music then becoming the soundtrack to your imagination. As such, this album would have been a great opportunity to really stretch the actual production of the songs in the studio, playing with production dynamics of the songs a bit, maybe making a few more of the songs more lo-fi, fades, a little more volume dynamics, playing with the panning, maybe stretched into something a little more “psychedelic” for lack of a better term.
Maybe that will be the evolution for the next release.
Don’t miss out on these guys.