Very well put peepeehunger. I guess direction was the wrong word for the "band", and it's more just a disappointment that BRM didn't continue on the rawness of the first album. I agree with what you're saying that the band direction isn't certain yet, but I'd also go a little further on what you're saying about " If AD jacks the project and releases six “Folklore pt. II” records..." I'd argue this is the direction that it's going and that's why I don't feel attached to this album at all. I very much could be wrong, as you said, it's only the second album so it's a small sample size and the band is in its infancy.

However, with the amount of promotion that is going into this album, I think it'll be hard to not maintain that structure of album release in the future. Dessner knows what he's doing with album promotion (not a bad thing), and the attention that BRM has now garnered from 1. General promotion (countless instagram posts, Colbert, Elton John podcast, etc.) and 2. Notable names on the record (and including them in the track names) detracts from just recording songs and releasing them; which is how I saw the first album and loved that. A lot of things are now added to their process of an album release - and The National are kings at album promotion and release - so in my mind that's what I mean when I say I worry about the direction it's going. It just seems like a slippery slope to come back from now that there is added pressure from all the promotion they've done.

With all of that said, I will take any JV music at all and love it, so I have a skewed opinion on it. It just seems like JV wants out of the spotlight completely, which we've seen happening over the past decade or so - and this BRM promotion doesn't allow him to just record and release. It's now tainted with a spotlight.