The Posies: Blood/Candy (Rykodisc, 2010)
I love The Posies. They will always hold the #1 position on my imaginary the best bands in the world -list. Sure they have some great challengers like Teenage Fanclub, The Beatles, Big Star, The Zombies, but still… I don’t need a tie-break to choose the winner. It will always be The Posies. After all, I haven’t listened to anything else half as much as I’ve listened to The Posies.
The new The Posies album Blood/Candy is finally here and the band is still in great form. Not that I ever expected anything else, because I really enjoyed Every Kind Of Light as well. I think it’s almost criminally unappreciated album and contains a bunch of wonderful songs. However, if I’m honest and of course I need to be, I was slightly disappointed with Blood/Candy during the first few days that we lived together. I instantly loved most of the songs. Take Care Of Yourself, The Glitter Prize, So Caroline, Notion 99, She’s Coming Down Again.. were just fantastic songs, but somehow the overall feel of the record, the arrangements and the production didn’t completely satisfy me. Basicly I thought it just needed a little more distortion, a little less sophisticated arrangements and a little more pure rock’n’roll. A minor part of me might still agree with my past self, but of course the reason is mostly the fact that I’m, as a fan, still stuck in the 90’s and they, as a band, are not. The majority of me have already set the clocks back to 2010 and have learned to appreciate also the ambitious side of the material like For The Ashes or Accidental Architecture. It would be impossible not to, because Jon Auer & Ken Stringfellow sing like two angels and are such a fantastic songwriters. One should actually praise them for being able to keep much of that old style of The Posies alive while adding some new dimensions to it. If I wasn’t such a simple fan boy whose sacred texts are called Frosting On The Beater and Amazing Disgrace, I might have instantly seen and accepted it.
