Alive - How do you feel about it now?, A new poll. Options

[SinfulEyes]

Now that most of you have had and listened to this album for a few weeks now, what is your impression of it?

[Wambangalang]

while i cant honestly say i hate it by any measure, i sure as hell cant say i love it...it has its moments

[FishOutaWater]

Basically, I stopped listening to it after I gave it a few tries.

The album is full of songs with a melody and chorus that make it sound like a Rick Springfield album from the 1980's - but about loving Jesus instead of some girl.

The lyrics remind me of the poems I was forced to write in second grade English class. Those forced verses where I was trying to draw on my simple second grade concepts and find words that rhyme. But half the lyrics don't even fit within the metering of the songs - resulting in people accidentally thinking that he is singing about a child asleep at the wheel.

Ed is playing near me with his band and I am not at all interested in going.

I just don't care about this album anymore.

Meanwhile, I listen to the 3 or 4 tracks from TGF that I have heard, and the other tracks that I can hear from the Fat Daddy bootlegs, and I can literally feel the hair growing on my chest and my gonads getting larger.


Here's the difference between Ed and TGF. It is plain and simple:

Alive sounds like it was written by a lyricist and a vocalist, and the songs were pushed from the "top down", for lack of a better word. The music just backs up the featured vocals. None of the instruments get their own place or purpose in the songs. I mean, can you imagine T.B.D. getting written by Ed now, the way he writes songs. That bass line makes the song. You need the bassist in the songwriting process, to put all the pieces together. The top down approach makes the songs uninteresting and uninspired. That is what the last 2 Live albums sounded like. And it sounds like it did not originate from some deep creative well as an artistic expression of music that Ed wanted to make. Rather, it sounds like it was aimed to hit a specific commercial target. It was aimed to sound popular and catchy and to appeal to a target audience. It sounds like Ed trying to be like Daughtry. Or Christian Rock. Or Kings of Leon. Or Katie Perry. It sounds like Ed was trying to make music that is what people want to hear and music is funny that way - I can't tell you how I can tell when music is organic and when it is contrived, but I can tell.

TGF sounds like it was written by a drummer, and guitarist, a bassist, and a singer - together. It sounds like it came from the "bottom up". Like the way old Live used to sound. The four parts - drums, bass, guitars and vocals/lyrics, all work together and are compatable and support each other. Each has it's own purpose and owns part of the songs. And it sounds like music that was sitting deep within the souls of the members of this band, waiting to be found, dusted off, polished, nurtured and shown to the world. It sounds organic. It doesn't sound like they made something for people to like. They made something that came from inside them, and they hope people like what they did.