Have to give it away, after revisiting Living Things, the record is better than I remembered. Lots of layers and details going on. Think the album sometimes gets an unfair treatment for coming right after ATS and toning it down on the "ambitious" scale of things, especially in the first half. With that said, I never bought the idea of LT being a deliberate attempt to please the label. I think it was more about the band wanting to chill out after 2 exhaustive records (MTM and ATS), wanting to release music more often, and bringing more energy to their live sets. If you take "It's not ATS" out of the equation, it's a fun record, with 2 main issues The Mixing. Everything loud doesn't solve everything The cohesion. It's literally a two faced record (caught in the middle) (I'm out)
You did it to yourself. Hehhe All in all, I love that album, LITE is always on my mind. And I mean always. Truth is that from Victimized on, it decays a bit, I expected so much from Tinfoil, which is cool but plane, and the tone is a bit lost... but I think is a cool album
I think it's worth noting that Mike himself has said that their early work is also reflected in Living Things. There's no distancing it from Hybrid Theory and Meteora. That said, I think it's their least cohesive offering and I usually only return for the run of Castle of Glass to Until It Breaks. Everything else doesn't do it. For all the flaws and odd tracks on The Hunting Party, it presents a much stronger cohesive album. Living Things is just disjointed and can't decide if it wants to be an extremely safe and trite electro-rock album, or a explorative album driven by folk influences.
3 weeks in I can confidently say that I love this album. I've listened to it almost every day since release, and it is fucking great. The only song I'm not totally sold, and its been like this since the very first listen, is Cut the Bridge. It's a cool song but clearly the worst for me. All the others are non-skippers for me, I'm so happy and can't wait to hear more from the band. And to see them live next year! The best songs for me are: Good Things Go, The Emptiness Machine, Overflow, Two Faced and Casualty
@Christøffer Wow, never thought it that way. For me, the first three songs run (LITE, IMR, BID) is superb.
I don't see how the mixing is any worse than in other LP albums. I guess A Thousand Suns has pretty balanced mixing whereas LT does just have everything blasting, but I feel like Living Things' mix has aged a lot better than that of the first 3 LP albums and is light years better than The Hunting Party's mixing (which has like zero bass and honestly weird sounding guitars, not sure what happened there). The synths are really crisp, same with the percussion. There's no normalization issues; aka it's not like Roads Untraveled gets artificially louder during the soft parts, the song actually works the way it's supposed to where the verses are quieter and the choruses are louder (unlike in the new "remaster" of Meteora). The cohesion I suppose fair point; the second half has great transitions, but the first half is kind of just a collection of songs. For me, Living Things is the best LP album when considering song quality in isolation, but falls to 2nd place when considering it as more than the sum of its parts (A Thousand Suns obviously reigns supreme there). However I don't really see how Living Things has worse cohesion that Minutes to Midnight or From Zero; MTM has the most jarring transition ever between Given Up and Leave Out All the Rest (and Valentine's Day --> In Between), and From Zero has many different styles. From Zero has gapless transitions between almost every song whereas Living Things only has that for Victimized --> Roads Untraveled and Skin to Bone --> Until It Breaks --> Tinfoil --> Powerless, but the lack of gapless transitions in the first half of LT doesn't really hinder the flow for me considering that the first 3 songs fit together so well and I'll Be Gone --> Castle of Glass is a pretty fitting pairing as well.
Regarding the mixing, I think we just will disagree on that one I'm of the opinion HT and MTM mixing are much more crisp and let the individual elements shine more than on LT. THP is arguable, I think they went for a specific garage sound that I found to work better on some headphones/device, while on other it sounds incredibly muddy. LT just has a lot of stuff blasting behind a wall of sound, and it sometimes gives me listener fatigue. Regarding the cohesion, I think it was not an issue of transition, but more of direction. The first half builds a kind of electro rock identity with big choruses and all, before the album completely switch gears and embark on a folkish venture. The album feels in that way more like 2 EP merged into each other, which I am not really fan of. I'd prefer a body of work to commit to a clear direction, even if I like the direction less (OML).