Sound proof Drum Isolation Booth in my basement!

    So aside from my day job in special education, and my love of anime and manga (and art, and books, etc...) I used to be a recording engineer/producer. I recently took up drums as a way to keep myself in music. So naturally, I needed to build a soundproof drum room in my basement. Here's a blog post detailing the basics. Perhaps most important is the air handling system I designed (and which is working great in practice).

    I originally designed the room with some added sound proofing features (such as using rockwool) but had to cut some costs when the total materials cost came in (I do all the construction myself). So I ended up with pink fiberglass instead. But after doing much research, it turns out rockwool doesn't make quite as much difference as people say.

    The basic construction including the room having an air gap between the outside foundation walls and the drum room walls. Then there were two layers of drywall on the outside of the wall, pink fiberglass insulation, and two more layers of drywall. For the soffits around the existing HVAC duct work, I did four layers of drywall on the inside of the room, then the insulation, but no drywall on the other side of the soffit. For the ceiling, given the low height of the basement, I went with pink fiberglass between the ceiling joists (first floor floor joists), then a layer of 5/8 OSB, then 2 layers of drywall. Might not seem like much, but that extra half inch of ceiling height helps, especially with the reflection foam on the ceiling after that (remember folks, the wall foam is not sound proofing, it is to limit reflections!).

    The floor plates for the walls were pressure treated in case of moisture from the floor. I kept the cement floor of the basement and just put area rugs instead of a finished floor. Cement slab floors don't transmit sound, so there was no need to build a floating floor and given the low ceiling height, this helped a lot. The floor plates also were caulked under the pressure treated wood, and along each edge, inside and out, to prevent any unevenness in the floor or board from creating a sound gap.

    The door is an exterior steel door with internal insulation. This has good weather stripping for sound, and is better than a wooden door for sound isolation. The challenge was that I had to cut it down due to the low ceiling height. I cut down the bottom edge, reinforced it with additional wood insert, filed down the rough steel edge, and it worked perfectly! 

Here are some random construction pics:

Love google sketchup, I still use the old free one.

Framing, notice on the left, there is an alcove to get access to the central stack snake port (lower left corner)

Insulation and starting drywall.

Cut down the steel door. Then replaced the blocking at the bottom, then glued it all tight and clamped it. After this, I filed down the rough steel edge and primed. Worked perfect.

    But now to the fun part! You can't have a soundproof room, with all the joints caulked, and weather proofed steel doors, without ventilation. You'll roast in there! BUT, if you just run the regular ventilation from the house HVAC system into the room, the sound of the drums (or whatever) will just travel through the vents into the rest of the house, which means you might as well not have even built the room.

    The solution is to build a ventilation system that is NOT connected to the house, but makes use of the fact that the room is in the basement. Basically, I built two baffled duct systems, one with an intake fan, and one with an output fan. The intake fan is located at the front bottom of the room, it draws in cool air from the basement floor. The output fan is located near the ceiling of the drum room, and pulls hot air (which rises) out of the room and spits it back out into the basement. You thus have cool air coming in, warm air going out, and none of this is connected to the house HVAC system. Below I will detail how I built these as well as some acoustic measurements I did showing the sound isolation properties of the baffled vent system.

    The basic premise is to have the sound from the room travel through a twisting and turning path (each right angle slows the sound down, and slow sound is quieter sound). The path should also be absorptive. I went with foam at first and not soft insulation or fabric because I didn't want dust build-up, however, it wasn't quite enough, so when I added a ribbed duct, I added pink insulation in any gaps. So the sound actually goes through the duct, but there's plenty of absorptive material as well. I made the decision to add the duct and foam after doing acoustical tests. You'll see those below too. 

    And then it's also important that your fans don't add noise. The fans were the fun part. I basically bought two 8" super quiet computer case fans, connected them to a cheap 12 volt power adapter, and put that into a switched wall outlet to turn them on and off.

    Lastly, you need to get audio and in and out of the room if you want to record. So I did a multi elbowed PVC conduit into and out of the room, the ends stuffed with foam. It has multiple curves, because each change in direction of sound decreases speed which decreases volume. Works perfect.

Here are pictures with descriptions:

Plywood frame. The box jutting out on the lower left is what will go through the wall into the drum room and have a wall grate placed overtop. The round hole on the bottom right is for the fan.

Here it is with the first layer of foam. 

Added a rigid and ribbed duct with extra pink foam in the gaps after doing acoustical analysis and finding that the hard foam cavity on it's own wasn't enough. Now there's more insulation for the outside, and the ribbed nature of the duct further disrupts and slows the sound.

Here's an early test mounting without the fan for acoustical tests. You can see the test mics laying on top of it.

Here are the two mounted. The bottom one is the cold air intake, the top one in the back is the warm air output from the booth

Side view

Lots to unpack with this one, these are the acoustic measurements with no baffle (just an opening from the drum room into the basement (approx 8"x10"), with the baffle (but without any duct in it), and with the baffle with the duct. The mics were in two positions. "On axis" means directly in front of the opening from the drum room into the basement. "Fan opening" means in front of the part of the baffle where the fan would be (the in/out side of the baffle). For the one with no baffle, I left the mic in the place it would be had the baffle been mounted. Omni directional measurement mics were used. 

As you can see, starting with the on-axis (top row), we get typical white noise profile with no baffle, the mic is simply picking it up straight from the speaker. With the baffle (but no duct in the baffle) we get significant high end and mid-range attenuation (YAY!) but the low end is still not great. Once we add the vent with the added pink foam (top, far right), the low end drops as well. This is because there is more between the mic and the inside of the baffle. The sound goes through the side wall of the metal duct, then pink foam, the rigid foam, then the plywood (instead of just the rigid foam and plywood).

The bottom row is at the fan side. You can see from the left bottom, that high end is a bit attenuated as you would expect since the speaker is in the drum room, projecting out the vent opening, and is perpendicular to the mic placement. The middle bottom shows that with the baffle (with no duct) there is the expected additional high end/mid attenuation. And the bottom right shows the additional modest low end attenuation with the duct and pink foam added. 

All in all, with the baffle, duct, and two types of insulation, we're getting upwards of 20 db attenuation at some frequencies, and at least modest attenuation at the low frequencies (the hardest to cut down). In practice, when walking around the drum room while someone was playing, I was blown away by just how quiet the sound leakage was from these vent systems. Worked better than I hoped.

For fun, I did the same tests using music (Thanks vintage Paramore!):

You can basically see all the same stuff as before. Highs and mids are dramatically cut from the no baffle tests (on the far left). Lows are still hard to cut down, but there's at least some drop.

Here's the audio conduit using PVC:

Here are some pics of the finished room. Enjoy!

You can see one soffit around an existing HVAC line. You can also see the hot air outtake vent in the upper right corner of the picture. There are power outlets on the three walls without the door.

Picture from the door, looking in.

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Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Sound Workshop Series 34 Console Manual - Complete Scan

Hi all, this post has nothing to do with my normal anime and manga reviews. I used to be in the music business and worked with an old Sound Workshop Series 34 console. 

When we mothballed the console, I kept a bunch of channel strips and over the years turned them into rack mount preamps and EQs. 

Another thing I kept was the full manual. This manual is almost impossible to find anywhere (I couldn't find a complete scan, just bits an pieces). However, I was missing a couple pages. But after much hunting, I was able to find the missing pages and complete an entire scan of the manual for those out there with the console or looking to use the channel strips you can get on ebay from time to time. 

So enjoy, I present you with the Sound Workshop Series 34 Console manual (and yes, the cover page is fake, designed by me, because I was missing the real one):

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Metal Lords (movie review)

    Random movie review: "Metal Lords." I was bored, it was on Netflix, so I watched it. And, it was actually pretty decent. How to describe it? It's a light teen comedy/drama movie about metal and friendship and growing up. It definitely doesn't have the realism of something like "We Are the Best" and it doesn't have the quite the emotional depth of "Edge of Seventeen" (2016 - god I love that movie). But it's also not as funny nor as sweet as "School of Rock." But despite some uneven parts and some unnecessary gross-out moments, there were enough genuine laughs and bright spots to be worth watching for anyone who likes light teen movies and likes music. 

    The basic premise is that there are two high-school best friend outcasts, one who is domineering (but deeply hurting inside) who loves metal and plays the guitar, and the more emotionally centered kid he had previously befriended (and who is the fulcrum, so to speak, for the movie) who plays drums. They form a "band" if you could call it that. The guitarist is determined to enter the school's battle of the bands to show everyone that they are "somebodies" and become stars like a prior metal band that came out of the school.

    But can they do it as a duo? And therein lies some of the best moments of the movie. Our drummer watches as a girl in the marching band goes ape-shit crazy on a teacher and then stumbles on her later playing cello - and she's good. Couldn't she join the band? Not if the guitarist has anything to say about it. 

    So we get a burgeoning teen love (drummer and cellist) that conflicts with an old friendship (guitarist and drummer) and that conflict propels some emotional growth in all three. But oh, the conflict between the guitarist and cellist reaches a peak in one of the best scenes in the movie (I won't spoil it).

    There's also healing family wounds, coming out of your shell, and romance. Unfortunately, for all the good, there are a few uneven moments, and the film as a whole has a less-than-believable overall tone. But that's not to say it doesn't work, it's just light, fun, fare - and that's okay.

    All three leads are wonderfully cast. There are some funny cameos from actual metal musicians and there's a great twist with a psychiatrist. There are also some interesting moments with the "rival" band - showing how as douchey as their music is, they're actually decent people. It's nice to see a teen movie where there is a mix of personalities, not just the good ones and the bad ones. But a whole bunch of average people being somewhat decent.

    Interestingly, there is also the regular appearance of a side character with Down Syndrome, played by an actor who has Down Syndrome. I'm a bit torn about this character, and I would be interested in hearing from some folks with even greater knowledge of disabilities than I do as to whether it is positive representation. My hunch is that, it is. The scenes with that character and the guitarist have a gentleness and humanity that I liked, it didn't feel forced to me, it didn't feel exploitative, and I think visibility is great. But, I also might be missing things that might have bothered others about that role (or maybe not, maybe it was good representation?). At the very least they tried and that's something too.

    Other kvetches: it didn't pass the Bechdel Test. There was only one female lead. She did not interact with any other female. There was another girl thrown in just to tempt the drummer. There was no interaction between any female characters at all. 

    And on another note, there was one gay joke. It started really badly with the guitarist calling having the girl in the band "gay." But then the other two look around at posters in the guitarist's room and the sight gag of all those singers with makeup, tight pants, and crotches packed with socks poked fun at the machismo of metal mixed with the innate queerness of many metal bands - and their infatuation with dicks. It was a funny turnaround to be sure. But that's still an uneven commentary on using "gay" as a pejorative. While they did manage to turn it back on the person who said it, it didn't quite resolve in a way that makes being gay okay. All it basically said is that all metal is gay, not that it's not okay to call things "gay" to demean them. On the whole, I wish they didn't make that joke, but there's been worse. 

    So on the whole, the movie was nice, it was sweet, but it isn't one I'm likely to watch again. There really were some laugh-out-loud moments, and the cellist's explosive temper is so well done by the actress. The overall tone was a bit mixed - veering more towards light teen comedy than anything really meaningful - but uneven at times too. And yet, there was some growth in several characters. So as imperfect as it is, if you're bored, like music, and like teen comedies, it might be worth watching.

    

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Carole & Tuesday Part 1 - a surprisingly bland story and characters with uneven racial and LGBTQ+ representation (Anime Review)

3/28/20 *after a series of comments/discussion at the bottom of this post, I wanted to make revisions in my review of Part 1 of Carole & Tuesday to clarify my concerns with some racial and LGBTQ+ stereotypes that bothered me. The commenter helped me to better understand the full context of the show (since I had only watched part 1 to this point) as well as the content creation process and representation in the show. I was still bothered and pulled out of the narrative by some choices that were made, but my original review likely took a heavy handed approach in highlighting these issues. I hope this revision is a more balanced and nuanced appraisal of the effort put into this show as well as the feelings I experienced watching it. As always, this is just my experience and others will have very different ones and thus different opinions, that's what makes art art. I will try and mark my edits as I go through and revise this review with brackets and asterisks [*].

Carole & Tuesday Part 1 - [*5/10] (see below for full scoring rubric)

I had really taken my time even starting Carole & Tuesday (something about it had me skeptical - maybe that it was on Netflix) and then it took me a really long time to watch the first 13 episodes that comprise "part 1" because while I sort of enjoyed each episode in the moment, I didn't feel compelled to whip through it like other series.

But finally, amid too much time on my hands during this work closure, I finally finished part 1. I decided to review the series in two parts rather than as a single series, since it was labeled part 1 and 2 (for some reason). I haven't seen part 2 yet [*so there may be aspects of part 2 that put things in part 1 in a different perspective.]  I also found that writing this review was very tough, because there was a lot to wade through with this show. It ended up being a very long review, so I've put BOLD headings along the way if that helps.

Sound Workshop Series 34 EQ rack project - FINISHED!!!!!!

Sound Workshop Series 34 EQ rack project

UPDATE 11/10/22 - I finally scanned the entire Sound Workshop Series 34 Console manual, you can access the link to it here. 

Original post:

In a former life, I was a full-time record producer/recording engineer. When one of the main studios I worked out of closed, I got 8 channel strips from their Sound Workshop Series 34 console, a good 80s-ish workhorse console. My gole was to take the EQ modules out of the strips and rack them up as a single 8 channel EQ outboard unit.

Several years ago I racked up just the 8 mic preamps from those strips into an outboard chassis. All it required was a dual rail 16 volt power supply with phantom, a chassis, and some connectors. The outputs are unbalanced, but I have A/D converters that switch from +4 to -10 so I just use the converters on -10db making it a really simple project. Here's a pic:

Reevaluating Mathew Good's album "Lights of Endangered Species" 8 years later

* updated at 3pm 3/30/19

I found Canadian alt-rock band Matthew Good Band around age 20, the year their album "Beautiful Midnight" was going to make it's U.S. debut (in horrifically altered form - I have only ever owned the Canadian version). They have been a seminal presence in my life ever sine. Three of their four albums prior to breaking up still regularly haunt my iphone's playlist. I still bang out covers of some of their songs when I'm tooling around on my guitar. I still want to be them.

But then they broke up, and Matthew Good embarked on a solo career that has now lasted far longer than the band's own brief 6 years. This morning, meaning to take out his second solo album, I accidentally put his 5th solo album ("Lights of Endangered Species") into my computer (yes, a CD in a CD drive) and proceeded to listen to it on my studio speakers. This was probably the first time I'd listened to it on them. I'm glad I did. It's lead me to reconsider it's value in the pantheon of his and the group's albums.

While "Beautiful Midnight" was my introduction, it wouldn't take me long to go back and listen to the prior two albums. Matthew Good Band's debut was "Last of the Ghetto Astronauts" which has a couple amazing songs, but overall sounds like an indie band of the mid-nineties and struggles to firmly remove itself from the 80s and early 90s rock. To put it frankly, it's just not a cohesive sonic vision of an album and doesn't scream "professional".

Their next full release was "Underdogs" which may have the best opening track of just about any album of the era. For a sophomore release, this is one of the best albums I own, and captures all his anger, the bands intensity, and the fierce melodicism of his singing and the underlying music. It's early, but it is fully formed and one of their best albums.

This was followed up by (the Canadian version only please) "Beautiful Midnight" - the culmination of late 90's Canadian Alt-rock (think Our Lady Peace and Finger Eleven as other contemporaries). It still had some of the instrumental sparseness of mid-nineties rock but there was also some amazing production around the jagged guitars and fierce singing. This was the height of Matthew Good Band. An album that stood on it's own as individual songs and as a collected work. It embodied all of the sonic features of the band as well as Matthew Good's lyrics and unique singing style - targeted yet interestingly phrased timing, amazing pitch but incredible vulnerability, wrapped in anger and sadness and depression and lyrics you might not want to really understand because they were clearly insight into a man who was grappling with dark places. "Beautiful Midnight" was the culmination of "phase 1" of their sound.

What feels to me like the next phase in their sonic evolution was their fourth album, "The Audio of Being" which retained the lyricism, melody, and intensity of the former two records, but began to add in some lushness, some slowness, some ambiance and clearly did so to create something almost akin to a album-length single work than a collection of songs. This was an album that was meant to be listened to as an album, in order, in one sitting, and worked best that way. It was a solid release, and despite some great songs, was probably just a tier below their prior two. It would be their last.

After breaking up, Matthew Good began was has now been a 17 year-or-so solo career. But the second phase of their sound wouldn't end with "The Audio of Being." To the contrary, his first solo release, "Avalanche" was the apotheosis of this next phase. Gone was the need to fill an album mostly with high energy rockers baked in naked aggression and he now fully embraced the inter-connectedness and sonic ambiance of "The Audio of Being." Where "Audio of Being" was straddling two worlds, the new Matthew Good sound was here with "Avalanche." It was a breath-taking album, incredibly well recorded, with great songs, and a album-length consistency and vision. He wasn't afraid to take long long minutes with minimal music or singing, of slowing things down, of bringing in the timpani, or orchestrating a haunting vision rather than leading a stadium in hit after hit. Phase 2 was here, and it was brilliant.

But then came "White Light Rock & Roll Review," his second solo album. While it had one or two "good" (?) songs, it was a blow to my expectations. After four consecutive incredible albums, this was a clunker. It was stripped down, but not in the mid-nineties couple of guitars way, it was hollow. The production was not memorable, the songs were missing their vibrant insight into his mind, the melodies not interesting, and the music empty. One should have seen this coming. For all it's incredibleness (and it is), "Avalanche" couldn't quite shake the feeling of being a bit empty itself. While it is a masterpiece, it sounds like one man. The Matthew Good Band albums all have the collected hearts of the members surrounding each passage, but on "Avalanche" every musical line, every instrument, basically points you back to his voice. He is front and center and really quite alone on that album - the musical lines and styles, even though played by others, have a uniformity. But the songs, the singing, the production on "Avalanche" were amazing and being the first solo album, one was amazed that his genius was continuing, so the singular focus wasn't distracting. But on "White Light..." the loss of heart hurt. It was just a forgettable album that also seemed a direct assault on the phase 2 sound of the prior albums. It was intentionally pushing away from that densely produced but sonically spare vision, but not into anything interesting or emotionally potent with its attempts at raw intensity.

That album was followed by "Hospital Music," a mostly acoustic album of forgettable songs and then "Vancouver," which was so middling (not necessarily bad), that there is not much to say. *update 3pm 3/30/19 - I do want to spend a moment more on "Hospital Music" though. It was written following Matthew Good's psychiatric hospitalization and subsequent diagnosis of bipolar disorder. So while it may not resonate with me, I don't want to disparage something that probably has great personal significance to him. The challenge of being a consumer and critic is that to subjectively document how art impacts me I risk offending or hurting the creator. That is not my intent at all. My opinions cannot and should not ever be equated with an objective view of the art, nor a commentary on the personal value it has to its creator. I want to be sensitive that although I did not resonate with "Hospital Music" (despite being a life-long sufferer of extreme mental health challenges), that doesn't mean others won't or that it doesn't have value. Also, if you are suffering from mental health challenges, please reach out for help. At the very least, here is the national suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

It turns out "phase 2" would be a brief two albums, and "White Light" would presage a phase 3 that would include "Hospital Music" and "Vancouver." Phase 3 could best be summed up as "really well recorded local music performed by an incredible singer and band." Imagine that local band that's been trying to make it for 20 years, that just can't get their big break, hires a major national act to cover their songs and pays the best producers to produce the album. That's what phase 3 is: mediocre, forgettable, but not bad, songs played and recorded really well. It is the smoggy twilight that hides the colorful sunset to a brilliant, maybe too bright to be sustainable, early career.

And then comes "Lights of Endangered Species," an album so late in the journey that I had probably only listened to it a couple times. But I remember liking parts of it. Yet somehow, it never really stuck with me and ultimately, after that first few weeks of listening when it came out, just got put away and forgotten. Until I mistakenly put it in this morning instead of "White Light..." What I got, was a reminder, that although far from perfect, far from a repeat of the albums that defined my early twenties, this was a talented singer, songwriter, and a well produced album that works as a whole album - if not necessarily as individual songs.

I'm not sure I ever listened to it on my studio's speakers, but this is a really well recorded album. I believe it is produced by the same producer as "Avalanche" and certainly sonically it bears many hallmarks - the kick drum's sound is clear but authentic, the snare real and so much more than just a sample, there is texture and depth to the recording. But this is also, and maybe that's why I get it now, an album not for teens or early-twenty-year-olds, but for middle aged folk, which I now firmly am. Maybe it aged better because I've aged. It isn't memorable, save for maybe the last song, but has moments of the melodicism of the early releases. It has some of the expansiveness of phase 2, but it also has some of the local-band-ness of  phase 3, especially with the heavy use of a brass section (BRASS SECTION IN MATTHEW GOOD!?!?!?!). Not perfect, but not an affront either. It might be the most fulfilling of the "phase 3" albums.

It's interesting to consider what might have happened if this had been the follow-up to "Avalanche." Sonically, it is the most like it, and it has, in my opinion, better songs than the three in-between it and "Avalanche". What I'm most disappointed in myself about is that I haven't bought the albums that come after this to see what they might offer. Are they more of this? Are they a new phase? Do they rise above the low-point or do they continue it, making "Lights of Endangered Species" a brief respite from an otherwise forgettable string of albums?

Certainly, "Lights of Endangered Species" if considered as the quiet, thoughtful album, as counterpart to the brooding of "Avalanche" and the blistering of "Underdogs" and "Beautiful Midnight" has a strong place in their history. I'm glad I re-listened, and I might again. But it also has inspired me to check out the more recent albums to see what they might offer and how they might relate. I'm also going to go back and give "Hospital Music" and "Vancouver" another listen to see what I might have missed, what I might not have been ready for. I'll keep you posted.

ps. you'll find several of his albums in my favorite albums list here.

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Links for Breakfast

The manga I ordered to review hasn't come in yet, I just started an anime, and I'm in the middle of one book and starting another, so no reviews yet, sorry! Also, my daughter has a special guest post cooking, so hopefully we'll have some great new content this week for you. But to tide you over, here's some awesome articles I read this past week:

Who knew that the Star Trek theme from the 60s had lyrics? Not me? Boy are they terrible: http://mentalfloss.com/article/28895/star-trek-theme-song-has-lyrics

OMG finally, an art museum with an actual sense of humor: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/flemish-museums-art-censorship-rubens-1322735

Lava lamps: we always knew they were good for something: https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-lava-lamps-protect-from-hackers/

On robots, slavery, dehumanization and shinto (very very cool article and different perspective): https://www.wired.com/story/ideas-joi-ito-robot-overlords/

Have a great weekend!

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Pancakes and LINKS for breakfast

I'm going out for brunch with a friend today, and I'm probably going to get bacon, but for you, you get...links of internet (no sausage here!) for breakfast.

Really cool story about the search for a missing literary nerd: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/magazine/the-strange-case-of-the-missing-joyce-scholar.html

Fascinating article about dyslexia, in a writer! https://www.wired.com/story/end-of-dyslexia/

Interesting website that lets you find similar sounding bands quickly: https://www.music-map.com/

Love me some NIN and this is a funny story about their best album: http://mentalfloss.com/article/548360/nine-inch-nails-trent-reznor-fbi-murder-investigation-down-in-it

LGBTQ and the limited happiness of those characters in traditional games: https://kotaku.com/let-queer-characters-be-happy-1827147707

Enjoy your internet.

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Chvrches - Love is Dead - third album's the charm!

My sister suggested I check out the band Chvrches last year because she felt like the lead singer looked like "a girl from the anime you watch." Well, I don't know about that, but the lead singer Lauren Mayberry really is cute and has a light, occasionally imperfect, and lovely accented (Scottish) voice. Their first two albums really only had one song that stuck out, but it blew me away: "Mother We Share." I have been obsessed with that song and while I liked the other songs okay, especially watching them live, they just didn't have the emotional impact I look for when listening to music. I can certainly imagine a large group of people who would like their music intently. It's a mix of electronic, euro, pop, dance...etc...and a bit dark. But me, I want songs that make my heart feel.

I was therefore eager to listen to "Love is Dead" their third album in the hopes that it would rise up to the potential of "Mother We Share" across a whole album. It almost does and it is certainly their strongest album to date. I made the awesome decision to order it on vinyl which came with free mp3s of the album. It's perfect, not only do I have the mp3s for my phone, but in an apocalypse I can make a hand-cranck gramophone and listen to music still! The album art is beautiful and perfect for the spirit of the music and the vinyl is the coolest transparent blue. I'm totally happy with the purchase.

Many people have described Chvrches music as being reminiscent of the 80s. I can certainly see that comparison but it never felt quite right to me. Then, listening to this album, several of the songs, particularly the best ones, really did feel like I was listening to hits from the 80s, so I went back and listened to hit songs that were actually from the 80s. You know what? Churches does it better! The 80s songs didn't hold up, they were a bit too slow, the production was weak, and although they had nostalgia, they didn't have much heart. On the contrary, my favorite songs on "Love is Dead" FELT like what I wanted 80s music to sound like but actually doesn't. This is a total win for Chvrches.

Chvrches is a threesome with the two gents handling most of the music load. However, they reached out for some support in the production of this album and it shows. On this album, I really like hearing a mix of real drums with the electronic and they have even been touring with a drummer expanding into a quartet. Even better, where their first two albums struggled with very weak melodies and dark production, here we get much more melodic lead vocals with stronger hooks. Many will disagree with me but I'm a fan of their poppier work and this album has at least four really standout songs that hit those marks well. Some songs however feel more like the first two albums which means they don't do much for me, but the best ones are endlessly re-listenable. I think I could play "Get Out" and "Never Say Die" on loop forever and be happy.

This is definitely my favorite Chvrches album. 4 standout songs, 2 pretty good songs and 6+1 other tracks. Overall a solid release. Definitely worth it for the 4 standouts and the blue vinyl with great cover art. Rating: 7/10 "recommended" as an album but "Get Out" and "Never Say Die" are 9/10s as singles and "Graffiti" and "Miracle" are both 8/10s.

Song by song analysis:

01 - Graffiti - good song
02 - Get Out - great hook, maybe my favorite song on the album.
03 - Deliverance - the verse melody and music is some of the most 80s-ish on the album, the hook doesn't totally take over though, so it doesn't quite arrive as a great song.
04 - My Enemy  - guest vocals by Matt Beninger - his voice just doesn't do anything for me, the beat behind it is pretty empty and sparse which doesn't do him any favors. The song overall doesn't get me hyped up the way some of the others do.
05 - Forever - the pre-chorus has a nice little break down feel to it, but the chorus it leads to is pretty bland. Too bad, because even though the verses are only okay and the pre-chorus is good, the chorus is a let down.
06 - Never Say Die - another standout song, one of the two best on the album. Her voice is just so beautifully hers on the verses: all the little imperfections we love about her singing. Great pre-chorus both melodically and production, really builds into the chorus, "never never never ever never ever ever." (God bless her for remembering that, even live!) One of the best on the album
07 - Miracle - another standout on the album, good melody, strong beat in the chorus, interesting to hear her through distorted vocals which is a production technique I love, but so different than the lightness of her normal delivery. Still not sure how I feel about it on her voice, but not in a bad way. Good song!
08 - Graves - this also has a distinctly 80s vibe with the production, the chorus melody is decidedly not awesome to me, many will probably like it and disagree, but it doesn't work for me. I like the bouncy feel of the verses even though its not a style I actually like in a song, so I probably won't listen to this much. I just can't get into this song like I think I should. It just missed the mark somehow.
09 -Heaven/Hell - the verse lyrics and melody and production do nothing for me. She doesn't even sound like herself on the pre-chorus, just generic sounding vocals - some sort of production on her voice as well as her delivery depersonalizes it. The chorus melody is okay, but the production doesn't get me pumping but it's' close to an okay song.
10 - God's Plan - a song where Martin(?) provides the main vocals - his voice would probably work fine in any number of indie bands, but it just doesn't do it for me in Chvrches. The lyrics and melodies are also not very inspiring on this. This is a song very much like those on the first two Chvrches albums in style and a lot less 80s and more synth-dance-trance-I don't know the genre names well...
11 - Really Gone - her opening "I" is one of the best sung single letters ever in the history of music. A simple slow opening verse, beautifully sung pre-chorus "I'm holding on" just perfectly imperfectly sung opening line to the pre-chorus, some of her best (meaning most emotionally resonant) singing on the whole album throughout this song, the song never really arrives anywhere though, so okay end of album track, but that's about it. Definitely not a single-type song. The production is mostly a pulsing single synth with some light accents of her melody on another synth.
12 - ii - creepy-ish instrumental piano tinkling with some talking in the background. It's not really a song at all. Just a 1 minute filler, don't' really know why it's on here.
13 - Wonderland - nice change in how she vocally goes from the verse to the pre-chorus linking the phrasing rather than making them two distinct sections. Big beat on the chorus - it's a slower song, so probably not single-worthy just from that, but probably the 5th strongest song on the album.

 What did you think? Let's hear it in the comments.

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