01. Miseria Cantare (The Beginning): Immediately it starts it sounds like the theme music for 'The Terminator' - it has the apocaliptic gongs, random words being chanted and the whole vibe is like the scene where Sarah Conner sees the playground being obliterated. Maybe Dreamworks is planing on getting this to be the theme tune of the forthcoming third Terminator movie.
02. The Leaving Song Part 2: Very much like Black Sails but Davey's voice has gone up an octive or two. It sounds almost like they want to launch into a ballad at times - "I thought too much, you won't find anything." At times the vocals go whisphered and sound vaguely sinister - "I watched her grow, I felt it change me... I waited slow now it consumes me." For some reason it reminded me of the film 'Hideaway'.
It has the very memorable lyrics, "I thought too much, you won't find anything" and Placebo-esk distorted female spoken word as background at one point. There is a hint of Tool about 2 minutes in as Davey's vocals appear to sheer into the beginings of what could be an electronic scream.
03. Bleed Black: Despite the title similarities to a Hole song be reasurred they have nothing more in common. Initially fast paced, again high pitched vocals contrast with almost gutteral (for Davey) segments. This song is comparatively warm.
04. Silver and Cold: Piano with a sound of thunder breaks into almost electronic sounding drumming. It sounds like a Halo song with quasi-Cure lyrics: "I will paint you in silver, I will wrap you in cold." I really like this song, it is very melodic although detractors will inevitably say it sounds gay - it does but that does not prevent it being a nice noise.
05. Dancing through Sunday: The title comes straight out the wannabe Cure handbook. The song has hoarse shouted vocals with random girly-sounding bits that remind me of a 1980s pop song. "We dance in misery, and we dance on and we dance on." Amusingly it also has a guitar solo. The parts are almost mismatched.
06. Girl's not grey: Many people will have heard this as it was available to stream from the Offical site and Fanscape is promoting it to death. It has grown on me a lot. It still sounds vagually reminicent of Gregorian Monk chants. You can tell Davey has spent more time on his vocals, he appears to have worked out how to do scales and felt like using this new found ability. I am sure it will do very well as a single, as it is radio friendly and lots of confused people will buy it hoping the 'woman' on the song will be wearing very few clothes on the inlay.
07. Death of seasons: This starts off sounding reminicent of mellow Snapcase, with horse strained vocals over a noisy montage of sound. The imagery of the falling star is nice, then you get weird electronic sounds, very VNV Nation. This is not a complaint but it is a considerable jump from high pitched odes to the falling star to early Pitchshifter having jumped on your mixing desk. Ambitous and slightly curious to follow, like many of the songs on the album it is multi-facited, ending on a string section with echoed vocals in the back, it provides a mental image of staring and screaming into an abyss.
I was happy when Adam said that "I think it is one of the most diverse records we've made. I think there are parts of the album that are really fast, aggressive and angrey, and parts that are initate and melodic" I just did not expect to get all that on one one in the space of 3 minutes 59.
08. The Great Disappointment: The beginning sounds like wind over marshes, with trade mark guitar sound building up behind. Davey appears to be truely singing, reminicent of A Perfect Circle in style. The repetiton of "never never wanted this, always wanted to believe" makes it a haunting and thought provoking song. I felt curiously moved by the refrains "I was wasted away" and "dreams were the only place to see them." This is my favourite song on the album by far.
09. Paper airplanes (makeshift wings): It's fine apart from the fact that the chorus sounds like N-SYNC.
10. This Celluloid Dream: Remincent of Art of Drowning but higher pitched and with hoarse shouty bits. Repetition of "twisted" makes me giggle uncontrolably as it brings back memeories of the Wigger contest on Howard Stern. The title makes me wonder if they are trying to cash in on their existing link with the American Film Institute (another AFI) so as to turn up in more search engines. Another song that I am sure will be popular with the new fans. It is pretty enough, as I am beginning to expect there is the contrast between shouty bits and high pitched 'melodic' bits.
11. The Leaving Song: Sounds exactly like the Rufio cover of Madonna's 'Like a prayer'. A very melodic song, although the guitar sounds tinney.
12. ...But Home is Nowhere: Sounding angry and lost thoughout this is one of the best songs on the album. Think 'Jack's Lament' from 'Nightmare Before Christmas' but make it angry as well as dispairing.
