Who’s heard the new Rhett Miller album? I just listened to it for the first time. As a disclaimer, I’ve liked Rhett Miller since the Old 97’s 1997 album Too Far To Care. I prefer the country influenced music he makes with them. He’s been getting progressively poppier though. His more accessible stuff is still good, but I’m biased against it because I think he’s at his best making records like Too Far To Care and Drag It Up.
I started to get a little bored while listening to it, so I wrote down my thoughts stream-of-consciousness style. It’s been slightly cleaned up.
The first four songs of the new Rhett Miller album (The Believer) have left me somewhat sad. I knew it was coming, but Rhett Miller is trying to be a pop star. That’s been the obvious progression in his career path, and it’s definitely culminating here.
That’s not to say it’s bad. The fifth song seems pretty catchy. And I haven’t really caught that many of the lyrics. Rhett Miller always comes up with good lyrics. And he’ll have some good stuff on here, the first one wasn’t too bad, this one’s good. But there’s been some not-that-impressive stuff so far.
Oh my god, song 6 suuucks. Well, I don’t want to pass judgement so quickly. But it sounds like he’s narrating some soap opera. Come on clever lyrics.
Oh, “Singular Girl” is coming up. That’s a fantastic song, I have an mp3 of it from the Old 97’s when they were recording Satellite Rides. Very clever lyrics.
Song six is still weak. He sounds like such a pussy. And it’s called “I Believe She’s Lying”. Ooh, sounds very dramatic.
Song seven sounds weak. And is that a girl singing too? This is a lazy song. The Old 97’s do sad and plaintive way better than this. Hey, Rhett Miller is sad about some relationship he had in the past. Imagine that. This song he did when I saw them (the Old 97’s) in concert. During the encore Rhett came out by himself at first and this was one of the ones he sang. He addressed one side of the crowd when singing his lines, and the other when singing the girl’s.
This “Singular Girl” isn’t nearly as good as the Old 97’s version. I hate to keep harping on this point, but it saddens me that Rhett would rather do this than make kick ass Old 97’s record. I’m sure Rhett Miller Pop Star pays a lot better though. It’s somewhat like a college athlete going pro early. Sucks for me, but who’s to say I wouldn’t do the same?
Though I still hold out hope that the Old 97’s will put out another album as good as Drag It Up was. I would bet that two years from today there won’t be one though. But hopefully it’ll happen sometime.
This one’s not bad, “Delicate.” It’s upbeat at least. Possible clever lyrics. I can never really understand large stretches of words in a song the first time. It takes me a few listens to understand what he’s saying and figure out how clever it is.
“I am in love with you, but you are delicate.” Not clever.
I’m kinda sad that it’s almost over, but mostly cause I’m having fun writing this. When I first started, four songs in, I was thinking “thirty more minutes?”
This song doesn’t seem bad, slow but with an interesting rhythm. It’s called “The Believer” though, that can’t be good.
Okay, it wasn’t great. And the last song is “Question,” one of the weakest Old 97’s songs there was. Rhett took it back for this album and put strings in it and shit. Great. Girls love it though. Rhett’s gonna become a teen idol. Though I thought he looked a bit scary on the cover of The Instigator. This version isn’t even that different! The piano and strings are very soft and don’t make that of a difference in the song.
So yeah, I was a little disappointed. (I mean no animosity toward Mr. Miller, he’s still one of my top few favorite songwriters over the past ten years.) But I’ll definitely listen to it more and hopefully it’ll grow on me a little bit. Share your thoughts.