There's something about the first impression a band makes on you though—it's not just that release, it's all the potential you hear in it. Eventually the potential gives away to the actual band, which either lives up to what you imagined was there, or doesn't (often the latter, because that's reality for you).

They released a sort of return-to-sixies-form record a couple of years ago ("lousy with sylvianbriar" and also, apparently, several albums since), but the damage was done—or I was anyway.

There's nothing worse than the hotly anticipated album that just blows. Looking at you, second Further Seems Forever album. I didn't have a lot of money, so that $11 was devastating.

Wide Awake felt like the full culmination of everything that came before it, and Cassadega felt like aimlessly searching for where to go next.

That's not a hot take on Bright Eyes. That was the conventional wisdom (especially in Omaha) up until 2005. As for Saddle Creek as a whole—well they were all friends and played on each other records. If that's not your thing (I certainly doubt it would be my thing NOW) I can see disliking the whole thing.

My diagnosis is that they used to be together all the time, and dicking around and swapping records and were all searching out their album's sounds together. Once they all got married and moved apart, the music became something they got together to do, which is why, I suspect, it doesn't sound thought through and just…

Has there ever been a bigger Elliott Smith aping? Yes. Blake Sennett's (sp?) tracks on those early Rilo Kiley albums.

ALSO—I saw him at Carnegie Hall in November and they played through Ruminations and then took and break and came back and did some "old stuff" and it was almost all those solo records! And the people around us were singing along—like THAT was what they were there for! It was bizarre.

They do what they do, and I feel like I need about three albums of it, and I'm good.

Grizzly Bear and to some extent Yo La Tengo (who change more song to song on one album than album to album, it feels) are the only, among those bands, that seem to have changed all that much though.

TBH, I wasn't that enthused about Digital Ash or Cassadega (except for "Everything Must Belong Somewhere" which I think is among his best songs).

Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst lost me after Cassadega. Seems like he had it all figured out. I listened to that first solo record a couple of times and liked it okay, but none of the Mystic River Band stuff did anything for me.

The production is great; it has both good songs and memorable jams. It's great.

SBS sounds so good and it's songs are so shitty, even and perhaps especially Impossible Germany, which if I never hear again will be too soon.

I understand though—it's MM's major label debut and the production reflects that. One of the songs even showed up on a Nissan commercial.

Having at least a decade of stuff you don't ever want to hear again is pretty Bowie, tbf.

Senator, I think we might have just become best friends.

I wasn't into Futures, but then, right as it came out, I also moved and wasn't hanging out with people who liked Jimmy Eat World anymore. Looking back, I wonder if I even liked them that much (I did—Clarity/Bleed, some EPs and splits, that GBVs cover).

Because it's not enough that the poptimists won the market and the critical sphere—they have to salt the Earth, apparently.

That just doesn't seem borne out by the data: http://pitchfork.com/review…