So I’m listening to a band that I’m not much a fan of, and I’m listening to the latest album and I’m still not won over. Not going to say which band because I don’t feel like starting a fight where people can’t handle the fact that their favourite isn’t above reproach (people tend to get really riled up when someone isn’t into this band as much as they are). Just saying I’m not much a fan of them and this album isn’t making me want to be more of a fan.

Anyway, my understanding is that this album is divisive, and I don’t quite get it, but I think I have an idea as to why.

A lot of people will listen to music for the skill and complexity, and for what is being done in the music. That’s a fair way to approach stuff… so long as you’re still listening to the music, I think. I don’t think it’s fair to just listen to the skill and the technique, though of course there are artists who use music as a way to display their ability and that appeals to some people, but that’s not what I’m looking to ramble about here. Well, the first bit of this paragraph, sort of, but the second bit, no.

This is a band that has played with a bit more complexity and skill in their music in the past, and they still play with that on this album, but it’s different. I find that, often as a band or artist or group, etc., progress in their career, their skill improves and they may get better at articulating what it is that they were doing when they were younger, but it does come at the cost of that energy. It’s refined and perhaps more directed and less wild. Of course this is not a firm rule, but that’s what I find for a lot of groups. Some become more juvenile as they go on, but… yeah. And I think that’s part of why some later career albums aren’t viewed as favourably as earlier career ones. That youthful bite and venom isn’t in everything as it’s reshaped. Of course it also isn’t always reshaped that well, and sometimes it’s abandoned entirely. It can be difficult to stay hungry and still have a bit of fight in you as you get older and see continued success.

So anyway, this band isn’t playing in the most technically complex way. They still have complexity and technicality here, but it’s diminished compared to prior albums, and I think it’s because this is a group that has a firm idea of what is and is not allowable in their music, so rather than some spaces with verbosity, they can’t warrant it and so they’ve held back a bit. They’re servicing the song and giving it a bit more space than usual.

I think too many people are listening to the complexity and not enough to the music, and that’s part of why this album is seen as divisive. And if that’s what they are looking to get out of the music, good on them, but it’s not necessarily the right album to be trying to get that from. Of course once a bit of art enters the public sphere, how people approach it is up to them, but sometimes there is an optimal or appropriate way to approach something. Sometimes you have to engage the work on its terms as otherwise you might miss what is happening.

Most bands change over time, and that’s the way it all goes and all that stuff. Here’s a band still playing to their strengths, and perhaps more so than usual, and it doesn’t click. Fair. But I do think people aren’t listening to the music on this one, and I think that if they were, they’d probably like the album a lot more.

It’s Tool’s Fear Inoculum, by the way.