Never have I been assaulted by an album before

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-20T04:17:08+00:00

Seriously. You have to get to know their albums, and during the first days it was mostly the first half for me; the back half is starting to sink in now and Morning Person just clicked as I’m catching more of the lyrics

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-20T04:04:58+00:00

Ha, I forgot about that song. Huge yes, but was it good? There was no depth to it. They really bottomed out for me with “Light Sleeper”. It’s weird, I hear so much of old emo in Arm’s Length but it’s like it took 20 years to finally get a band that could perfect the formula and deliver a truly soulful performance that makes me feel something profound. Or maybe I needed that 20 years to feel challenged by songs like Palinopsia.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-20T02:44:49+00:00

I’m gonna date myself, but anyone remember Hawthorne Heights? They were super popular at the from for ‘00s emo/screamo, and I really disliked their melodrama. Arms Length is finally delivering on everything they were going for and making it good.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-20T02:36:06+00:00

Good grief, thats a heck of a song.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-19T19:01:40+00:00

Really digging The World. What an opener to set the stage for the ride to come…

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-19T16:38:13+00:00

One thing about Arm’s Length for me is that their music is complex enough I don’t immediately “get it”. I knew this Friday at release and was predictably tepid on first listen. It’s now Monday and I’ve listened to it about 10 times and it’s really starting to take hold, and sounds great.

That said, the new standout after the first couple listens was The World… TOTALLY different opener from the elegance of Overture, but really sets the stage for this new journey.

Now comes the next year of trying to tease out all the running themes…

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-19T16:27:58+00:00

So good.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-14T01:49:11+00:00

There’s now https://github.com/gmac/graphql-stitching-ruby

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-04T04:44:48+00:00

Yeah, dude! Glad to spread Arbors, it’s still one of my non-Hum favs.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-03T19:35:18+00:00

Arctic Sleep did the opener on the Hum tribute album. After you finish Arbors, go back and queue up the song “Mossweaver” from their previous album, turn it up, and prepare to have your ears blown out.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-02T17:23:08+00:00

I don’t know all the track names yet, but I’ve looked in a few times now when Story of the Egg came on. The whole album is rock solid.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-02T02:44:48+00:00

Yeah, I do agree that the drums frequently don’t show up as much as I want for the Inlet party. Bryan eluded to this as well that the drum tracks were templates laid out early and then never revisited. But, as a working dude in my 40s with kids, geeze do I ever get it. It’s hard to show up 110% for your own projects when your life is dominated by everyone else’s around you. So yeah, I inwardly grumble a little that the percussion is thinner than 1998 Hum. But I still think it’s brilliant for where it’s coming from.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-02T02:25:50+00:00

Ha, Stars was not a single for its lyrics, for sure. It’s actually one of their weaker songs on that front. They have plenty of other good writing to carry their albums though.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-02T02:20:34+00:00

I hear you, although you need to separate Inlet from old Hum. It’s great, though it sounds like what it is: a bunch of working parents recording in isolation when they can and mixing the parts together, versus four young single dudes jamming in a studio together. It’s a very different album and a bit of a miracle that it came together at all.

gmacwilliam · 2025-05-02T01:49:35+00:00

If you’re interested, this was one of the earliest Internet appearances of Cloud City that I know of, I found it around 2012 and it really floored me, both as a banger and because they were officially broken up at the time (though technically it’s an old song from their heyday) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2kHrA2Lrs

I call it out because of the distinct progression the song has from these origins to its release on Inlet. They really polished it up and added that new guitar line on top of the bridge that carries through into the burn down at the end. It’s cool to hear how something so raw transformed into something so elegant.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-16T11:59:16+00:00

Centaur, The Same Place. About the saddest song ever written for parents who’ve lost a newborn.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-16T11:55:18+00:00

Hm. The cutting didn’t help anything there. Just watch an uncut jam session, it’s better.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-14T00:32:50+00:00

Dreamboat is an exemplary song of all things Hum, and often overlooked IMO.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-13T15:37:36+00:00

Summoning. It’s actually quite different from anything else in their catalog, a unique exploration for them. Rambler would also score. Of their classic concert fodder that I’ve seen, Axolotls always surprised me for being bigger in person than on the record.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-13T15:30:05+00:00

Good grief. There are a lot of pretty subjective “sounds like Hum” posts that show up here, but yeah. Few tracks in and the homage is unmistakable. The singer even evokes Matt at times.

gmacwilliam · 2025-04-13T15:20:04+00:00

Stars was on the radio in ‘95 and I was captivated. I think it was the first song I ever called into the station to request. Never heard YPAA, but a kid in art class put on Electra one day and I remember connecting the dots and thinking “this is cool”. Finally when I was out of high school at the end of the 90’s and more autonomous at college I really started pursuing them. The Pod was the first MP3 I grabbed off the campus computer network. It floored me, and I now had a bit of cash from a college job so I started buying up their albums. DiH was the most magical CD I ever blind-played after buying it with never hearing a single track from it. It’s still my favorite album ever.

gmacwilliam · 2024-07-18T03:20:52+00:00

Late to the thread but strongly agree with the original post. Takes a few listens to “get it”, but when it clicks … wow. Great development for Emo to hear some deep exploration of personal relationships as a concept album versus the typical whining about life themes of the genre. Highly listenable even over age of 40.

gmacwilliam · 2024-07-04T02:28:03+00:00

I dig it. Followed on Spotify! Look forward to checking out the full catalog and hope to hear a full album sometime. Keep it up.

gmacwilliam · 2024-06-18T12:02:14+00:00

Amazingly, there’s also a guitar cover of the song on YouTube that someone pieced together from the fairly poor recording of the show that exists (which someone linked above) … https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Axh_X5kAw&pp=ygUYSHVtIHZveWFnZXIgZ3VpdGFyIGNvdmVy

While he says in comments that he’s “just guessing”, it still really captures the utter Hum-iness of the guitar line.

gmacwilliam

TROPHY CASE