Rating: NNN
I’m usually the first to shudder at a band’s ‘coming of age’ album — you know, the one they put out after their last one hit it big but now they’re all mature and really feeling like they’ve come into their own artistically. That’s where MR are nowadays, and it’s shocking that they’ve actually come up with an album so far removed from their previous work, where instead of tepid ‘experimentation’ (i.e. hiring someone to do string arrangements), they’ve gone into ambitious territory where OK Computer-era Radiohead collides with post-punk aggression and some very restrained proggy-type tempo changes. Occasionally, the band comes close to falling back into old habits, but with their new enthusiasm for sounding nothing like they used to, they’ve successfully created an album’s worth of intelligent music for the Warped crowd.
