Jomei is obviously being sarcastic with this "the last 10 years" nonsense. The last 10 years would be dis-regarding everything after Happy Bivouac, including Fool On The Planet, Smile, Another Morning Another Pillows, and Thank You My Twilight. If you don't like those, than what the fuck are you doing here? Just go back to listening to the FLCL soundtracks.

[quote="GoldenRhino"][quote="Spike"]Yes, I enjoy a few tracks off of it like Last Holiday and Ladybird Girl [b]as much as I do anything from the 'golden years'[/b][/quote]

Mare took note of the range of valid opinions being expressed in this thread. But I think I just found an opinion that is objectively incorrect (wrap your head around that) and morally reprehensible.

The way I see it, listening to music involves a lot of opportunity cost. When you choose to spend 40 minutes of your life listening to Horn Again, that is 40 minutes that could have otherwise been spent listening to bloodthirsty butchers' new (relatively) album. You could listen to Lily, My Sun and listen to the exact same sterile dynamics and tones and forgettable vocal melodies. Or you could listen to something like Ocean and be fuckin' inspired. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AJb5XD9pA

I know this is veering dangerously close to "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE." Yeah I'm being unreasonable, and a dick. But the point of this thread now is just to wank off about our perception of the current state of the pillows. So I'm doing my part.[/quote]

lol too bad most of the past two butchers albums are mediocre, bland, and forgettable for most of us (myself included). Ocean is fucking boss, but your post is kind of absurd, dude. Also, if you yourself think you're being a dick saying that his opinion is "objectively incorrect" (which is impossible) and "morally reprehensible," why the hell would you say it? We could at least try to be sensible about this.

I don't care that people dislike newer releases, what I DO care about is that sometimes when they don't, they go around being rude and obnoxious about it. Today, that includes you, apparently. It's sad to see.

How about we all start being a little more civil, reasonable, and understanding? Teasing/trolling/etc aside, if we're going to post seriously, let's not be assholes about it.

Edit: That's right motherfuckers, old-school Mare is back, and I'm going to try to keep things that way. I know I've been guilty of what I'm complaining about here, most of us have been. It's never to late to fix that though.

I'll restate: To me, [i]personally[/i], my subjective [i]opinion[/i] is that saying a song like Last Holiday is just as good as any of the pillows' best songs from PML, LB, HB, RH...is completely ludicrous. To the extent that I don't actually believe him.

And this is a place for sharing opinions.

You don't have to emphasize that it's your personal opinion, as such should be assumed on here.

Thank you, though, that was much better.

[quote="GoldenRhino"]I'll restate: To me, [i]personally[/i], my subjective [i]opinion[/i] is that saying a song like Last Holiday is just as good as any of the pillows' best songs from PML, LB, HB, RH...is completely ludicrous. [b]To the extent that I don't actually believe him.[/b][/quote] Yeah. Pretty sure Spike be trollin'.

[quote="Spike"]Jomei is obviously being sarcastic with this "the last 10 years" nonsense. The last 10 years would be dis-regarding everything after Happy Bivouac, including Fool On The Planet, Smile, Another Morning Another Pillows, and Thank You My Twilight. If you don't like those, than what the fuck are you doing here? Just go back to listening to the FLCL soundtracks.[/quote]


How is he being sarcastic? You sure you're not the one that is? Plus, everything on AMAP was already released during or prior to 2002. I agree with Jomei, and I've made this point several times over the past 4-5 years. TYMT was the end of an era. Penalty Life started a slow decline in the pillows music. That's not to say there were not some gems from PL onward. There's a crapload. (Freebee Honey, The Third Eye, and Boat House rank among their best works IMO, for example). But to say the band is on the same level right now as they were when they released Runners High? Smile? No... they're just not. Every band goes through a decline though, it's just how it is. I'd be hard pressed to find a song by the pillows I DON'T like, but I can also admit when the quality of their songs and albums are dropping. My Foot seemed to be an aberration, and they haven't even been able to get back to that level with the 4 latest albums.

But I accept that the band will probably never get back to the way they were during the Golden Era, and that's fine. They still put out damn good music. 1997-2002 was like... God tier. Now, it's just plain awesome tier (for the most part). The pillows are still among my favorite bands, but I can also step back and assess the situation and realize Sawao was writing better music a decade ago.

Lily, My Sun was in my head all through bowling today, I shot a 725 series during an over-average tournament qualifier. (234, 235, 256) I think I did well enough to make it.

I figure I could put up some rough numbers on the album...

Limp Tomorrow - 8/10
Give Me Up - 7.5/10
Movement - 8.5/10
Lily, My Sun - 7.5/10
Biography - 6.5/10
Sad Fad Love - 7/10
Nobody Knows What Blooms - 9/10
Emerald City - 7.5/10
Brilliant Crown - 7/10
Doggie Howl - 7/10

So yeah, don't flat out hate anything on here. Not many stars, either.

:edit: .5 point increases for Biography and Give Me Up! Everything else still looks right.

[quote="Cloudy_One"]if anyone considers [i]that[/i] too high, get fucked.[/quote]

lol totally not helping the atmosphere of contention around here brah. D;

Hope you made the tournament.

heh. It's so butt-ugly when it actually comes down to meaning things like that, though.

[quote="Son Goshin"]but I can also step back and assess the situation and realize Sawao was writing better music a decade ago.[/quote]

herp derp thats why they call it the "golden years".

Simply put i'm tired of making this arguement. Wether Horn Again is lyrically and structurally better than, say, Little Busters is irrevelant to me. The only requirement I have for a song to be good is, "did I like this, yes or no". I have one whole playlist with just The Pillows music, and it has every album and every single. I frequently just put it on shuffle. Several times something like, say, PML will play, and then it'll jump all the way up to Horn Again and maybe NKWB will play. I don't immediatly think OH DERP I CANT LISTEN TO THIS THE QUALITY IS WAY BELOW WHAT I JUST LISTENED TO. No, I just listen to it and enjoy it.

That being said, i'm taking my toys and going home because i'm tired of this thread. When people start complaining about the next album before it comes out we'll have this conversation again.

IM.
We agree that we disagree,
We disagree that we agree.

[quote="Cloudy_One"]:lol: heh. It's so butt-ugly when it actually comes down to meaning things like that, though.[/quote]

Well of course you don't honestly mean it (one would hope), but this atmosphere is probably the reason a lot of newer people don't stick around as much; they come in expecting to see a bunch of cool people rationally discussing the pillows and they get threads like THIS.

[quote="Spike"][quote="Son Goshin"]but I can also step back and assess the situation and realize Sawao was writing better music a decade ago.[/quote]

herp derp thats why they call it the "golden years".

Simply put i'm tired of making this arguement. Wether Horn Again is lyrically and structurally better than, say, Little Busters is irrevelant to me. The only requirement I have for a song to be good is, "did I like this, yes or no". I have one whole playlist with just The Pillows music, and it has every album and every single. I frequently just put it on shuffle. Several times something like, say, PML will play, and then it'll jump all the way up to Horn Again and maybe NKWB will play. I don't immediatly think OH DERP I CANT LISTEN TO THIS THE QUALITY IS WAY BELOW WHAT I JUST LISTENED TO. No, I just listen to it and enjoy it.

That being said, i'm taking my toys and going home because i'm tired of this thread. When people start complaining about the next album before it comes out we'll have this conversation again.[/quote]

Sorry I had to put in such plain terms, I thought a couple people would have trouble understanding what I meant.

And don't put words in my mouth, I do the same thing with random playlists. I enjoy a song for what it's worth.

[quote="Ashinow"]The "we" you are talking about, happily isn't a big part of the current community. (I might be wrong here[/quote]

I don't know how long you've been paying attention to these forums, but since about the time of Good Dreams, people have been making comments to the effect of, "This album/single is a step back in the right direction" and "This album/single gives me hope for the next album." I see this in just about every release thread, and it's been going on for as long as I've been on these forums.

Of course there are exceptions like Spike who evidently think the pillows have been making music of perfectly uniform quality and depth for pretty much their whole career, but I think that for a majority of the community, the pillows' releases for the past ten years (give or take a few) have been lacking compared to what came before.

I'm not saying there's no worth at all to their newer music. To the contrary, HORN AGAIN is pretty decent, and I'm glad they made it (and some songs they've written since TYMT have been pretty great). What I'm saying is that, if one buys into the (I think) uncontroversial notion that the pillows have fallen a few notches from the era in which they put out near-perfect albums, I think it's long overdue that one accepts that the pillows will probably never make an album on par with TYMT or any other album from the decade before it.

@Spike
Are you deliberately misreading my posts? I said nothing about "disregarding" the music since TYMT. What I said was that TYMT was the last "truly great" album. Since then, the albums have ranged from pretty bad (OOPARTS) to quite good (Good Dreams), but never reached the heights of the pillows' earlier plateau (Kool Spice - TYMT).

My assertion is that they have fallen off the creative plateau and will never make it back up. It is not that they will never make a decent album again, because HORN AGAIN and several other albums clearly demonstrate that such is not the case.

[b]tl;dr version[/b]
[b]
The pillows used to put out epic, mind-blowing, Godly albums, but
[quote="Jomei"] "pretty good" is the new status quo for our beloved band,[/quote]
and this should be old news by now. [/b]

I know we still don't have scans yet, but someone put up half the lyrics on LyricsWiki, so maybe if Mare or someone wants to take a look and translate here's the link:

[url]http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Pillows:Horn_Again_%282011%29[/url]

I was wondering for a while what Sawao was saying at the end of Give Me Up's chorus, didn't think it was "no humor".