Hello all. I don’t understand what the fuss is over the new MUTEMATH (yes I spell it all caps I like it better that way. Learn to cope.) album that came out middle of last week. I went and bought it when it came out because Chris from Underoath (one of the only corporate bands I respect anymore) posted a rabidly raving review of it. I don’t think I would have picked it up so early otherwise, I’m not really that much of a fan of MUTEMATH. I own the albums/EPs but they don’t really float my boat. So Armistice is cool, yeah, but it’s making me crazy, I’m so on the fence about it that my butt is sore.
On one hand, it makes one part of me want to just throw back my head, arms out, and do the v4vendetta yell on a rainy rooftop, but at the same time I feel like I finally understand the meaning of the word ‘meh.’ Something about this album can’t be captured by words; in some ways I feel as though I should be hella evangelizing this entire album, standing on street corners:
“ma’am…ma’am! can I just have two minutes of your time…sir, sir! you look lost I can help you…no? hey ! Can I speak with you? It’ll be brief. Thanks. Have you heard this album yet? No! Good, well here’s a copy. Listen to it, please, no obligation, but I tell you, it changed my understanding of what music is I swear. Oh bless you, bless you. Tell your friends”
but then sometimes I just feel like I’m listening to J-tlake falsetto the shit out of some repeated, painfully cheesy ‘unrequited love’ lyric over the top of an altfuzz indie beat album produced by a decomposing Paul Rothchild, mastered poorly, and then cut into Thomas Jefferson’s wax cylinder recording machine. Yeah, sometimes it is that bad.
Oh, I almost forgot though. There is one song that I’m totally in love with off this inscrutably confounding track list. Spotlight totally captures what MUTEMATH was when I first downloaded Plan B as a free single on iTunes, back in the era I like to call the “There Is A Reasonable Chance That This Free Single Won’t Make You Want To Violently and/or Publically Kill Yourself And Your Neighbors’ Dogs” era of free singles. Anyway, we were speaking about Spotlight. There’s something about the presentation of the background harmonies that really appeals to the mixer in me, unless you listen, you don’t hear them, but DEAR SWEET UNREAL-BUT-EASY-TO-USE-AS-AN-EXPLITIVE JESUS do they add an intense amount of depth to the track, and they make it easy to sing along even if you can’t figure out what the words are. (I can’t, I’m no good at understanding Meany’s vocals.) To pick apart Spotlight some more, I turned up the bass, and it’s truly stunning. Check it out, when you can. One thing I’m not pleased with on this track; I’m really not that big a fan of the intro, it doesn’t mesh too well with what the rest of the song’s sound, but that’s a petty complaint.
Overall, that one track doesn’t pull the rest of the album out of my bin of records labeled ‘mediocre’ but it does at least put it closer towards the top of the pile.
If you haven’t figured out what I’m trying to say yet, I’ll tell you. I am a member of The Mixed-Opinion Party about this album, and I don’t like being undecided about something. (Being mixed-opinion is like being mixed-race but with less opportunity to become the president.) I think that Armistice is a good album, overall, but it’s best played in the background; it’s not something that I could actively listen to. It is actually decent to play in the background, though, when you’re doing something else (like writing this post.)
Final Opinion: Go buy/torrent these tracks, because I’m just one voice dissenting and I’ve been buried by all those “OMG Armistice totally rocked my socks off” discussions.
Happy listening.
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