Board 8 > Rank the Tracks Week 79: Protest the Hero's Palimpsest (+ Ataris results)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Previous results can be seen here:
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Rank_the_Tracks

The rules:
1. Listen to the album in full
2. Rank every track on the album
3. For the results, there will be a curve at the top of each list; two additional points between #1 and #2, and one additional point for the next two ranks. This way, the songs that really stick out to someone get an edge that is not immediately negated by someone else putting it lower. In the case of Demon Days, someone's 15th track will get 1 point, 14th 2 points, 4th 12 points, 3rd 14 points, 2nd 16 points, and 1st 19 points. For albums with greater than 15 tracks, everything ranked below #15 will be given 0 points and the scale for the top 15 will be the same as a 15-track album. For albums with more than 20 tracks, you only have to list your top 15 (with 16-20, I still like having the average rank listed)
4. If you want to include comments for individual songs, I will compile them in the results
5. The results will be posted at the beginning of the next topic
6. The deadline to vote is Sunday, September 11 at 8:00 AM EST - though if you are for whatever reason listening to the album around that time, just say so in the topic and I can delay a bit
7. You can sign up to be added to the user cycle - the next person on the list will choose 3 albums which the other users will vote on for the next topic.
7a. To ensure people are being given an actual choice, the three nominated albums must be by different artists. You can otherwise stick to a similar sound or era.
7b. The tiebreaker for these polls will be whichever is listed first in the poll options - make sure to deliver the results in order of your own preference (which will hopefully have the added benefit of influencing people toward your first choice if they can't decide).
7c. I have added a tiered vote structure - the least popular album will be removed and its backup votes distributed to the other two entrants.
8. The Acclaimed Music Bot will take the top album from the three highest ranked artists on Acclaimed Music who have not yet appeared. On the week before, people can argue for an alternative album by those three artists.

Protest the Hero - Palimpsest:
1. The Migrant Mother
2. The Canary
3. From the Sky
4. Harborside
5. All Hands
6. The Fireside
7. Soliloquy
8. Reverie
9. Little Snakes
10. Mountainside
11. Gardenias
12. Hillside
13. Rivet

User Cycle:
9/11: Snake5555555555 (La Dispute - Rooms of the House)
Jesse_Custer (skipping week but kept here for next cycle)
9/18: ZaziGuado (Sigrid - Sucker Punch)
9/25: firefdr
10/02: Johnbobb
10/09: VeryInsane
10/16: FoolFantastic
10/23: Seanchan
10/30: Giggsalot
11/06: RyoCaliente
11/13: darkx
11/20: neonreaper
11/27: Great_Paul
12/04: jcgamer107
12/11: ChichiriMuyo
12/18: BlueCrystalTear
12/25: MetalmindStats
1/1: Acclaimed Music Bot
1/8: HBJDubs
1/15: Raetsel_Lapin
1/22: Steiner

The Ataris - So Long, Astoria results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
MetalmindStats (22)
BlueCrystalTear (40)
cyko (40)
ChichiriMuyo (44)
HBJDubs (44)
Raetsel_Lapin (48)
StifledSilence (54)
Seanchan (70)
Johnbobb (82)

General Album Comments

colliding: I'm not playing along with the ranking but I do think this is the first time I've seen an album I would legitimately describe as "bad" being included.

masterplum: Oh hey I love this album

Seanchan: I've listened to this album dozens of times over the years. I'm not going to pretend it's an all-time classic or anything like that, because I don't think it is. But I keep coming back to it. Best I can tell, it's two reasons: 1) there's a certain karaoke singalong quality to a lot of these songs that just puts me in a good mood, 2) it's produces a hammer blow of nostalgia for places, times, and experiences I've never had. I recognize there's a certain dichotomy between those two things, and yet it just works for me. It's just a wonderful work that manages to be both catchy and down to earth at the same time.

FoolFantastic: Half the stuff here sounded to me like the montage transition music of a mid-2000s teen drama. The other half was rejected Sonic the Hedgehog background music. I already find pop-punk vaguely annoying and this had the added layer of being overly long and largely generic. I got a headache a few tracks in. The only moment that felt okay to me was a cover song, of which I greatly prefer the original.

Seanchan: I can see the merit of your some of your criticism. The album is a little bit too long, though I feel like we could say that for a lot of the albums we've covered. I don't know how old the band members were in 2003 but I'd imagine having a sound of a "mid-2000s teen drama" makes sense. Pop-punk in general just skews to that late teen demo. Not sure I get the Sonic stuff but then again I've played almost none of those games post-Genesis.

colliding: There are all-time classic pop-punk albums but this isn't one of them. Blue Skies, Broken Hearts Next 12 Exits is a much better effort from this band. This was their major label debut and the result is an album that's overall way too polished, safe, and long.

BlueCrystalTear: One listen down. I kinda enjoyed this. The thing I didn't ... was how redundant this was. Like I couldn't tell you which song was which, for the most part. A good way to make songs stand out is to balance out the rockers with some ballads. Instead, this is a record where every song reeks of its time, with no variety. Not even the "Boys of Summer" cover feels like it's faithful enough to the original to create the deviance the album needed. Don Henley did not approve of the butchering of that iconic lyric, did he?

I can see why FoolFantastic didn't want to rank this. It's not their cup of tea so hearing the same three songs five times apiece is going to annoy the crap out of them - no differently than things like System of a Down or Mos Def grating me, since those aren't my thing. But, for me, this was more along the lines of Black Marble or Opeth in how difficult it is to rank the tracks despite still enjoying this for what it is.

StifledSilence: I like this one a lot. Definitely among a number of albums I grew up listening to. The themes of nostalgia, fond memories, and missing home resonate hard with me. Then you have the emotional response to a fan letter that really stuck with me over the years, My Reply, that is truly a highlight of the album. The first four tracks are bangers, Boys of Summer is one of my favorite covers of all time, and the rest of the album is pretty good too. The ones I ranked 11-14 didnt hit as hard with me as the rest of the album, but they arent duds or anything.

ChichiriMuyo: I've never really listened to The Ataris and going into this I had a feeling Boys of Summer would be the only song of *ahem* theirs that I had ever heard. It probably is, but I can't be sure, because every song sounds like something I've heard a million times. As has been mentioned this album kind of sounds like the embodiment of a mid-early 2000s movie/TV script saying *insert generic pop punk song here*. I don't hate it, really, but I feel uninspired and unfulfilled by the experience. If it weren't for Boys of Summer (and the one acoustic track) I would have to say absolutely nothing about it stands out to me, and even that just makes me want to listen to other versions of that song rather than continue with this album. Maybe in an alternate reality this could have been the soundtrack to my life at 20, but by the time this album came out I was past any band that would write lyrics like "all the cool kids crowding around the air hockey table." Sadly since so many songs are so same-y there's a part of me that thinks the following list is in order of "how long I listened before I was bored." Well, except My Reply... I just really did not like that song.

Seanchan: This was a tough one for me to rank. There's not really a single standout song; the first 8 are all pretty close. Then I really enjoy the start of Takeoffs and Landings. After that the rest are in the fine to okay range.

HBJDubs: This is not a memorable album, but it's a good one for when I want to turn my brain off while I'm doing something else. There's definitely a place for those kind of albums even if the individual tracks aren't special.

cyko: Whoa! I didn't think anyone else around here even knew the Ataris, let alone liked them enough to talk about them!!

I absolutely love the Ataris - they were one of my favorite bands during the early 2000s. I still enjoy their music, I've seen them live multiple times and even hung out for a while after one of the shows with the lead singer, Kris Roe, talking about his songwriting and life on the road. Unfortunately, outside of a few songs, So Long Astoria is a pretty mediocre pop-punk album.

"Blue Skies, Broken Hearts: Next 12 Exits" and "End Is Forever" are both SIGNIFICANTLY better albums.
(...)
You know, I haven't listened to this album straight through in a while, but after listening to the album again, it's better than I remember. The lowest 5 songs in my ranking are pretty generic and kind of forgettable, but I do still enjoy the whole album.

There is an acoustic version of Looking Back On Today on a Warped Tour Compilation and I might like that version even more than this version.
There is a different version of I Won't Spend Another Night Alone on their earlier album that is way better. Something about this version feels off...
Whoever said their acoustic stuff is quite good is definitely on to something - It's not on this album, but San Dimas High School Football Rules is one of their best songs and their acoustic version is even better.

General Album Comments Continued

Raetsel_Lapin: It's probably odd to say this since I'm the one responsible for the album getting picked, but I've come to like this selection more than I expected to. I'd listened to it once back when Seanchan nominated it because I really wanted to hear another album by the band (I only had experience with "End Is Forever" beforehand) & thought it was neat, but it was still on the chopping block as something I wasn't sure I'd actually nominate. But as I listened to the album repeatedly to work out a ranking, I grew to really enjoy it.

It's hard to put into words, but there's something endearingly earnest about the band's performance on this album. It's overly long & almost comedically cheesy at times, the biggest track from the album is a cover of someone else's song, they almost aimlessly draw things out by continuing with TWO extra songs after the album ended (one of which is... just a song from earlier in the album??)... but somehow I think it actually works out. It feels like we're getting to listen in on the band just being themselves & doing whatever they want, with incredibly little editing or supervision. Duplicate songs, nonsensical metaphors, songs that feel like they *want* to be deep or experimental and fall on their faces, covers of famous songs that can't really compare to the original but who cares they're having fun. And you know what? I had fun too. Even some of the lowest rated tracks leave me with a big, stupid grin on my face and I think I kinda love this album. I probably wouldn't call it "good" objectively, but I also don't care for objectivity. I was thoroughly amused and personally don't ask for anything more.

BlueCrystalTear: The thing this album lacks is variety. Each song sounds the same as the last, even if they're about very different things. This creates a lack of memorability; nothing stands out, nothing sticks with you. You'd welcome this band if they came on the radio, enjoy the song for what it is, and maybe check out the album... and then find out that they can only do one thing. This is probably why they were a one-hit wonder. Just... "meh"

Johnbobb: This album was very ok but ultimately pretty forgettable unfortunately. Most songs kinda blended together

So Long Astoria track ranking

15. Unopened Letter to the World (Track #5)
Score: 44 (Average Rank: 11.11/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Johnbobb (#7)
Biggest Detractor(s): HBJDubs, BlueCrystalTear (#15)

14. The Hero Dies In This One (Track #8)
Score: 46 (Average Rank: 10.89/15)
Biggest Fan(s): HBJDubs (#5)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin, MetalmindStats (#15)

13. Radio #2 (Track #11)
Score: 51 (Average Rank: 10.33/15)
Biggest Fan(s): ChichiriMuyo (#7)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#14)

12. Eight of Nine (Track #13)
Score: 57 (Average Rank: 10.11/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Johnbobb (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): BlueCrystalTear (#14)

Raetsel_Lapin: The song wants to be experimental and thought provoking by ending with a heavily distorted reading of a passage from "Go Now" by Richard Hell, but it just feels more awkward and weird than actually deep. Also, the track basically demands that you take a break and reflect on the passage's message... but the album doesn't actually stop here, bouncing along to the next track without a care in the world. Having the conviction to actually END on this song would probably make a more coherent album, but I'm not sure anyone involved actually cared about the flow. Which, as I said, is charming in its own way but makes this song even more of an oddity than it already was.

11. Summer '79 (Track #7)
Score: 58 (Average Rank: 10/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Seanchan (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): Johnbobb (#13)

10. All You Can Ever Learn is What You Already Know (Track #9)
Score: 62 (Average Rank: 9.22/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#3)
Biggest Detractor(s): cyko (#15)

Raetsel_Lapin: It could be my imagination, but I feel like this song has the most "punk" feel to it on the album. Also probably the song I've gotten stuck in my head the most often from this album.

9. The Saddest Song (Track #6)
Score: 73 (Average Rank: 8.33/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin, Johnbobb (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): StifledSilence, Seanchan (#15)

Raetsel_Lapin: I'm too easily emotionally manipulated by this song's subject matter.

8. In This Diary (Track #3)
Score: 73 (Average Rank: 8/15)
Biggest Fan(s): StifledSilence (#3)
Biggest Detractor(s): HBJDubs, Johnbobb (#14)

7. Looking Back on Today (Track #12)
Score: 78 (Average Rank: 7.89/15)
Biggest Fan(s): cyko (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin, HBJDubs (#13)

6. I Won't Spend Another Night Alone (Track #14)
Score: 81 (Average Rank: 7.33/15)
Biggest Fan(s): BlueCrystalTear (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): Johnbobb (#15)

Raetsel_Lapin: It does repeat the song's title a few too many times for my liking, but it is incredibly catchy.

5. My Reply (Track #4)
Score: 84 (Average Rank: 7.11/15)
Biggest Fan(s): StifledSilence, cyko (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): ChichiriMuyo (#15)

4. The Saddest Song (Acoustic) (Track #15)
Score: 91 (Average Rank: 6.78/15)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): StifledSilence, Seanchan (#14)

ChichiriMuyo: After hearing the original I thought "who told them this would be a good idea?" However, this sound serves the lyrics so much better than the original. I almost want to hear an all acoustic version of this album to see what a difference that'd make. Almost.

BlueCrystalTear: This version works better. They should've given a few other songs on this album this treatment, which would've made some of the others more memorable as well.

Johnbobb: suddenly sounds much tackier like this imo

3. Takeoffs and Landings (Track #2)
Score: 101 (Average Rank: 5.22/15)
Biggest Fan(s): HBJDubs, MetalmindStats (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): Seanchan (#9)

Raetsel_Lapin: "I slept right through your international dateline" is such a ridiculous line that I love it. Oh, you lovable goofballs

2. So Long, Astoria (Track #1)
Score: 110 (Average Rank: 4.56/15)
Biggest Fan(s): HBJDubs (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): cyko (#9)

1. The Boys of Summer (Track #10)
Score: 134 (Average Rank: 3.11/15)
Biggest Fan(s): StifledSilence, ChichiriMuyo, BlueCrystalTear, MetalmindStats (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): Johnbobb (#8)

A reminder that Rank the Albums Volume 3 is currently open here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80129786

rallying for NSYNC here

also man you know it's rough when the best song on your album is a cover of someone else's song

particuarly if your cover is nowhere near as popular

What is a Westlife?

FoolFantastic posted...

What is a Westlife?

Seriously! I need some info on why these selections as they arent in the normal wheelhouse for what Id expect from board users. Ive heard the first two albums via family but Westlife does not ring a bell.

Seanchan posted...

Seriously! I need some info on why these selections as they arent in the normal wheelhouse for what Id expect from board users. Ive heard the first two albums via family but Westlife does not ring a bell.

It appears Westlife is yet another boy band. Not sure why we are being subjected to a boy band week but...

FoolFantastic posted...

It appears Westlife is yet another boy band. Not sure why we are being subjected to a boy band week but...

Because variety!

And nysnc is great you should vote for them

FoolFantastic posted...

It appears Westlife is yet another boy band. Not sure why we are being subjected to a boy band week but...

Lol, I kind of figured that from context. Have to have been a one hit wonder

Johnbobb posted...

Because variety!

And nysnc is great you should vote for them

Im skeptical but will remain open minded, considering Spice was better than I anticipated. Also, there are some guilty pleasure songs from Backstreet and Nsync

I approve of a boy band week and will try and find the time to weigh in, especially if BSB wins.

Kinda bummed that Art Angels didn't win the poll last week, but Sigrid is great! Maybe she's more known than I figured or maybe people just really dug Don't Kill My Vibe. But I will say if you like pop music and haven't listen to Art Angels, you should change that at some point. Or I'll just nominate it again whatever.

wow am only just learning for the first time that westlife didn't make it outside of the UK. you lucky dogs

Steiner posted...

wow am only just learning for the first time that westlife didn't make it outside of the UK. you lucky dogs

Flying Without Wings is awesome though.

Each boy band here has a couple good songs, but there's one of these three that I feel we have to cover at some point. I voted for that one. But don't count on me listening to it more than twice.

Johnbobb posted...

also man you know it's rough when the best song on your album is a cover of someone else's song

particuarly if your cover is nowhere near as popular

The repetitive nature of that last album made it so the standout was the cover, the one song people had an existing attachment to. Again, if the Ataris done a couple of acoustic songs and maybe a rock ballad, the others would stick out more instead of blend together. Look at Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - that one weaves through various melodies and that makes multiple songs pop, including ones that wouldn't have if every song sounded like the title track.

There's a lesson here in that you can't have an album where you have 14 songs that sound very similar to each other. Remember how I said that T-Swift's folklore was too long for this reason, and that it would have been much better if it was at least ten minutes shorter. Much like folklore was too morose for its length, So Long, Astoria felt like it was the same three songs played four times apiece, making no distinction between themes and giving them all that early 00s alternative vibe. The album does one thing and does it well, but that's at expense of having standouts. Note how I liked "Betty" the best musically on folklore ("this is me trying" the best thematically, and overall because of how close to home it hit) because I remembered it since it felt different. Aside from those two and the mega hit "cardigan" I don't really remember anything. The "Boys of Summer" cover is a standout largely because Don Henley and Mike Campbell wrote it instead of the Ataris. It's one of the three songs that tries something a little different. And since it's nowhere near as popular as the classic, it means the album did nothing memorable, and would have been better with a little more of the variety that having a cover exemplifies.

Also tag, will listen later. May only be able to get one in this week.

Did a first listen a few days ago and, uh, yeah...

What a bunch of you were saying last week (for So Long, Astoria) applies for me this week. This was just a long slog of "whatever"; a bunch of okay/fine metal instrumentation but with vocals that didn't seem particularly great and didn't feel "connected" to the music.

We'll see if my opinion changes with more listens but I am skeptical when my initial impression was so poor.

Previous topic - I'm not a big fan of that style of punk/emo, but didn't really want to pile on.

up

Soooo, anyone else listen to this week's album yet?

I've gone through it once, hoping to finish the ranking tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the album thus far... to a point that I'll hold off saying anything more specific for now, I'm afraid. Definitely working on it though.

Since I'm busy as fuck and will have even less time the next few days, I'm just gonna do something different and write thoughts about each song as I listen to it, then post my one-listen ranking.

"Migrant Mother" is kind of a mixed bag for me. There are times where I actually find it groovy, other times at which I find it appalling. I presume you guys know me well enough by now to know which parts are which.

"The Canary" is worse. At this point, I am starting to realize what my issue is here: The drums are at times overwhelming. It feels like it's almost impossible for a drummer to keep banging that fast, and the end result is needles in my back. The "feel" of the music is just too much.

"From the Sky" starts out indistinguishable from the first two. You could legit play me a 15-second clip of any of these first three songs and I would not be able to tell you which one it was from. There is a very different part that's a lot softer in the second half, which is why I like this better.

"Harbourside" is something completely different than the first three, a one-minute instrumental that sounds like it's from a climactic romcom scene. I love it for this, and that cooldown from all the banging is very, very welcome, and something So Long, Astoria lacked entirely. It really helps the rest of the album by just being there, and it's an awesome minute of music to boot that's hard to believe came from the same guys who made the rest of the noise.

"All Hands" is much like the first two tracks, but I like how it starts out - and the daemonic chanting actually works as a way to separate it from the other songs here, but not done in a way that sounds too screamy. I... actually welcome it?

"The Fireside" is... no thanks. Screamiest song so far. It's nothing but earsplitting noise, no different than crying children. I like the ending better, but not enough to redeem the song.

"Soliloquy" is an awesome word. This song is not one of those. The daemonic chanting does not work here like it does in "All Hands" either.

"Reverie" is when I start to get tired of this shtick. This is the fourth straight song that sounds the same. It's become apparent what my #1 so far is, the one that actually stands out. Like last week, my criticism for redundancy is that it renders the entire thing unmemorable. This one is just the same song as the last three and could have been removed.

"Little Snakes" is no different than most of this album so far. I do like it better than a few others on here because there's nothing that makes me dislike it more than those.

I see another short song called "Mountainside" and the running theme with the names and conclude this must be what it ultimately is: A welcome instrumental interlude that, although short, feels like a movie soundtrack song. This one is more tragic, but it's still great, and a welcome reprieve that would've worked better two songs ago.

"Gardenias" is awful. I do wonder if this is due to its track placement since it sounds no different than the others. The end outro is the only part I rather liked musically, though I think the song coming to an end helped too.

"Hillside" is another instrumental interlude and I find it curious that they had one on either side of the album's nadir; this sounds much like "Mountainside" but lacks the same effectiveness since it was so soon after it. At this point, it didn't really add anything, and lacks the same memorability as the first two.

"Rivet" is just the usual fare that summarizes the entire album. That's all it is. The outro is nice and certainly better than some of the others.

This is really a split of 10/2/1. Ten songs all do the same thing with only a little variance. Two other songs also do the same thing, which makes those standouts. And there's the one that really, really stands out because it's the one that helps the album the most. I would have found this album unbearable without it there. My #1 is without question.

1. Harbourside
2. Mountainside
3. From the Sky
4. All Hands
5. Hillside
6. Rivet
7. The Migrant Mother
8. Little Snakes
9. Soliloquy
10. The Canary
11. Reverie
12. The Fireside
13. Gardenias

bump

So when are we going to feature The Smiths

1.All Hands
2.Harborside
3.Little Snakes
4.Rivet
5.Reverie
6.Gardenias
7.Hillside
8.Mountainside
9.Soliloquy
10.The Canary
11.From the Sky
12.The Migrant Mother
13.The Fireside

General Comments:

Having listened to this three times now, I still don't know how I actually feel about this album. Progressive metal isn't exactly my favorite genre of metal and there are several songs here that I very aggressively dislike--I do not care for intense or epic drumming and there's a LOT of that here. To an actively painful degree at times. And yet, there's also at least one absolutely fantastic song that I love & I like the themes of the album. The darker side of American history with genocide, mass incarceration, suicide... I'd say that I generally enjoy the stories they chose to tell and the lyrics used to tell them. So this is simultaneously 'a very cohesive album that tells compelling stories & featuring an incredibly high scoring song, the likes of which few albums can ever attain' and 'actively painful at times, in ways that I hate'.

I have absolutely no idea how I would score this album as a whole (though, I suspect, having a 9/10 song will place this on the higher end of this cycle's "Rank the Albums" regardless), but I guess I'm thankful we covered it? It's all over the place with incredibly high and low scoring songs, but it's never boring at least.

All Hands: I actively love this song and feel that it fully justified ranking the album just to get a chance to listen to it.

Harborside: A surprisingly beautiful instrumental that would be a true highlight if only it were a bit longer... I feel the minute long runtime does not leave the listener enough time to fully soak in and appreciate it, though what is here is fantastic.

bump

2nd listen done

oop i wrote my rankings days ago and just realised i never posted <_<

1. The Fireside
2. Little Snakes
3. From the Sky
4. The Canary
5. Rivet
6. All Hands
7. The Migrant Mother
8. Soliloquy
9. Reverie
10. Gardenias
11. Harborside
12. Mountainside
13. Hillside

Oh hey, I kind of liked this one despite not typically listening to this kind of music. However, the vocals felt off to me, and I'm not completely sure why.

All Hands
The Fireside
From the Sky
The Canary
Little Snakes
Reverie
Soliloquy
Harborside
Rivet
Gardenias
The Migrant Mother
Mountainside
Hillside

BlueCrystalTear posted...

"Gardenias" is awful.

I had mixed feelings on the album on the whole but this I absolutely agree with

1. From the Sky
2. The Fireside
3. Little Snakes
4. The Canary
5. Reverie
6. All Hands
7. Rivet
8. Soliloquy
9. The Migrant Mother
10. Gardenias
11. Mountainside
12. Harborside
13. Hillside

I haven't listened to this a ton like I have some other PtH albums, but I'm not really sure why. All of it is fantastic, and I'm glad this got picked to remind me that I really should have.

Reverie
The Fireside
All Hands
The Migrant Mother
Harborside
Rivet
From The Sky
The Canary
Little Snakes
Gardenias
Soliloquy
Hillside
Mountainside

Protest The Hero is like The Ataris to me just in a different genre. Nothing sticks out, but it's a good listen when I'm doing something else.

1. Harborside
2. Mountainside
3. Little Snakes
4. From the Sky
5. All Hands
6. Rivet
7. The Migrant Mother
8. The Fireside
9. Gardenias
10. Soliloquy
11. The Canary
12. Reverie
13. Hillside

Two more listens did not change my opinion. I just didn't care for this. I feel like I should like this but my reaction was for the most part "meh". Two of the three instrumentals were actually very nice, to the point where it made me wonder if there's any classical music that would work for Ranking. The final instrumental is clearly the worst (of the 3), and the shortest, so I just put it last. The "real" songs on the album didn't do very much for me but I tried to rank them as best as a could, despite my flagging interest.

From the Sky
Reverie
The Fireside
Little Snakes
Soliloquy
Rivet
The Canary
All Hands
Gardenias
The Migrant Mother
Hillside
Mountainside
Harborside

Most of my familiarity with Protest is Fortress and Kezia. I think this one was pretty good, albeit it took a little while to get the ball rolling. The sides are ok interludes but I completely forgot what Harborside was, hence why it got the boot.

Also, apologies for not getting as into it, I just spent some time with some other things in my life going on.

TheArkOfTurus posted...

and I'm glad this got picked to remind me that I really should have.

hey it was worth it

1. The Fireside
2. The Canary
3. From the Sky
4. Gardenias - Epitomizes everything I enjoy about Palimpsest and also all that I don't.
5. All Hands
6. Mountainside
7. Little Snakes
8. Hillside
9. Soliloquy
10. Harborside
11. Reverie
12. Rivet
13. The Migrant Mother

A highly arbitrary ranking, all-in-all - ask me tomorrow, and I might maintain only my first place and last two ranks. That somehow feels fitting for an album I would really appreciate if I were a fan of this type of music.