Hoping this pops up soon. Though did stumble across a Chinese site streaming a pair of other songs (that wants you to pay to download the album lol).

Listened to kono yo hate made once. Definitely not sounding bad at all, another interesting take. I know some people rank that song higher than I do so may be more discerning.

Totally digging Base Ball Bear's take on Funny Bunny. I am a Base Ball Bear fan, so I may be a bit partial. They added what I guess I'd call a bit of a country-western vibe that flows really well.

Awesome, thanks!

Gave it a quick listen;

Strange Chameleon's solid. Pretty faithful but with an interesting atmospheric spin on it. Liking the stereo mix, and the guitar solo's great.

Carnival's sounding like it'll prolly be my 2nd favorite cover after Funny Bunny. Nails and indulges in everything that makes it one of my favorite pillows songs.

Great! Thank you very much!

[u]Great[/u]
Instant Music - Very simple approach to it, but it gets the feeling without sticking straight to the script.
Nonfiction - Wow, fantastic. This is one that matches or perhaps even surpasses the original. Sometimes a cover can make you realize how great Sawao's songwriting is in spite of the pillows' recent production, and this one achieves that. Gorgeous choruses.
Hybrid Rainbow - Fukurouzu. Enough said. One of the best female vocalists in rock.
Kono yo no Hate Made - Another one that reminds you of how beautiful Sawao's melodies really are. Succeeds in spite of its pop-rock-ness. Very moving, actually.
Akanai Tobira no Mae de - Just wonderful. Great choice for a song and perfect execution. Brings the heartbreak that's always been in this song right to the forefront.
Blues Drive Monster - Love the energy and the vocals. Do I know this singer from somewhere else?

[u]Okay [/u]
Strange Chameleon - Just made me shrug. Not bad, not great.
Carnival - Good but so straight-forward without anything to recommend it over the original.
White Ash - Another shrug.
Scarecrow - Not awful, but it just seems like a mainstream pop version of the song.
No Substance - Another cover that's very straightforward without bringing anything new I love to the table.
EnerLUGIA - Bad song choice. Interesting execution. The two factors cancel each other out, so I just don't care much.

[u]Bad/Annoying[/u]
Funny Bunny - Do not like the stylistic choice. This song has been done and done, and at this point I'd just like everyone, including Sawao, to keep their fingers off it.
Fool on the Planet - Shitting on one of my favorite songs. Fuck whatever this is supposed to be.

Overall a successful tribute album with a couple stinkers and some filler that's not too bad. Would have liked to hear Mineta Kazunobu do a song. Or the N'Shukugawa crew or Shinsei Kamattechan. ;3 Or how about Soutaisei Riron? If this album has one flaw it's too many "safe" artists and covers.

I pretty much find the whole thing meh.

But it's a fun release.

Edit: Also, I particularly have venom towards that Funny Bunny cover. It makes me angry almost, like the Sket Dance cover.

[quote="Tidusauron12"]Edit: Also, I particularly have venom towards that Funny Bunny cover. It makes me angry almost, like the Sket Dance cover.[/quote]

Yeah, that thing is shit. I wish they wouldn't have let such low-wattage bands near Happy Bivouac. Give 'em an Ooparts track! (NOT Lemon Drops)

Okay, so, seeming like there is some early difference in opinion based in part on some existing familiarity with the other bands >_>;

I, for one, am not particularly crazy about the Fukurouzu's cover because the vocalist really isn't my cup of tea. At least for Hybrid Rainbow. I just went and quickly sampled a few songs on youtube, and she actually does sound pretty good. I think I may properly check out some of Fukurouzu's original stuff (and may wind up warming up more to the vocals on the Hybrid Rainbow cover that way).

Akanai Tobira no Mae de also isn't really doing too much for me. But maybe because I'm not too much of a fan of the quasi-electronic drum and bass style of the cover.

I am digging Instant Music, Blues Drive Monster, and Kono yo no Hate Made. Nonfiction's pretty good too.

Whiiiiiiiiich brings me back to Funny Bunny.

Apparently my love of the cover is quite possibly indeed due in some part to my predisposition toward Base Ball Bear. Though the thing is, I don't uniformly love them. I'm pretty meh toward a fairly significant portion of their discography. I tend to gravitate toward stuff like: http://picosong.com/esH6/ or http://picosong.com/esHZ/ I was also not entirely thrilled upon first seeing their choice of Funny Bunny, hoping they'd pick something not as treaded. But at least to me it seems like there's some definite purpose with some of their choices with the song; the kinda country-western slide-guitar-emulating elements aren't something I've ever heard them do before (And to be fair, maybe that also just registers as another subconscious plus for me; I love a lot of the Rolling Stones' early 70s stuff that has some of that vibe to it, for example).

Anyway, the tl;dr brings me to two overall points about Rock and Sympathy.

1. In general; While the pillows are a great unifier of our love, based on other activity around IM, I think our tastes in music tend to diverge a lot elsewhere. They overlap in places, but not always everywhere. So it's only natural that opinions will differ between individuals more on a cover album than they do on material by the pillows themselves.

2. More specifically; I think some of us also take the pillows' music pretty fucking personally. Which can make us more apt to love/hate other bands' takes on particular songs based on whether or not they resonate with our own personal attachment to the song in question. (I think some of Jomei's analysis of the songs he really liked is apt here. And while I [i]really[/i] don't want to harp on Funny Bunny with this, I unfortunately think it's the perfect example, especially considering what Jomei said in regards to it - that everyone, including Sawao - should just stay away from the song. It's been professionally covered several times now. Nobody ever decides to capture the elegance and beauty of the original recording from Happy Bivouac. Not even the pillows themselves, who have gone as far as to [i]re-record[/i] the song to be more in-line with how they play it live.)

Hmm. That Funny Bunny cover just sort of...happens. But almost every version of Funny Bunny besides the original is meh, short the performance on the REAL TRIAL BD.

Kono yono hate made is actually pretty damn good. Man, so is Akanai Tobira no Mae de

I'm still feeling the Instant Music cover. And Scarecrow, but it's definitely just an easier listening version.

The Enerugiya cover removes all of the energy that the original had. Definitely not feeling that one.

Carnival uhhh...yeah, it's basically Carnival.

What the FUCK did they do to Fool on the Planet? If I'd never heard the original I might be fooled into thinking it was just some upbeat pop song.

Blues Drive Monster has some good energy to it, I like.

What...what's going on with Hybrid Rainbow? That high pitched voice at the very beginning is a little jarring. Not really feeling it overall either. Man, she takes pretty drastic breaths.

Strange Chameleon has the echo thing going, and short of the singer's voice being a little...stoic, it's not bad. The solo really went to waste, if you ask me. I always loved Sawao's lead in for the solo and Manabe's sharp, wailing guitar expressing the desperation that went with the song. And then the droning, repetitive riff at the end...yeah, I'm just gonna go listen to the original recording now.

You know what I want to hear, though? A Tiny Boat cover. Or No Surrender.

I'm not going to lie, this tribute album actually sucks.

Only like one or two really good tracks.


First one was much better.

I thought the first one was pretty meh. But this one is even more meh.

Ellegarden's Funny Bunny is more of a travesty than BBB's though. I can't even listen pass the first 30 seconds of that pop-punked Funny Bunny.

Part of Rock and Sympathy's problem is simply the retreads. The pillows have a [i]huge[/i] library, yet there's five of the same songs covered. I think Base Ball Bear would've been a lot better received if they did a different song. And while I dig the Carnival and Strange Chameleon covers, I definitely can't argue with people finding them pretty straightforward and not really enthralling, especially since they've already been done before. So same goes there.

Anyone mind re-upping, the link above is down. I totally forgot about this release TBH until a friend recently brought it up and I remembered I never listened to it!
Thanks in advance!