Well I'm just not up to reading the 21 pages before this, so I may be repeating others thoughts with less eloquence. This was a difficult album for me to completely love. It has one of the best opening tunes of any recent Church album with Cobalt, a devastatingly great follow up with Deadman's Hand, lovely, dreamy Pangea and delightful Happenstance, which feels like something from ULTC. Then they lost me with Space Savior. I admit after playing the whole thing through several dozen times my aversion has lessened. On Angel Street was also less accessible, but I came around very fast and admire the desolate mood. Gradually the album returns to the form of the beginning and ends with my favorite, Operetta.

Part of the disconnect is the pacing, it just feels kind of empty in the center, the energy lags for too extended a period of time to my ears. ULTC is one of my all time favs and this rivals it, and perhaps surpasses it in some of the individual efforts. I had some issues with the sequencing of FY as well, but it struck me more as an arrangement of jewels, with an emerald where a ruby should be and maybe 2 sapphires next to each other on one side. We all have particular moods or modes that we resonate with more. I guess I like the rockers, the dreamy sensual voyage/poems, and the psychedelic disassembling of time and matter, more than the very pointy, angular songs and the spontaneous, repetitious , improvised-sounding riffs of Space Savior or Real Toggle Action. But that's just me.

I'm glad the album has been so well received by critics and fans alike. Vindication comes from both inside and outside, any praise given to this band has been well earned. I guess I just don't understand why this one was so singled out in particular and others ignored.