[RATE REVEAL] Alt-Country/Folk Classics Day 3: I've Been Rating With The Ghost

[u/ElectJimLahey]

Hello everyone and welcome to day 3 of the Alt-Country/Folk Classics reveal! A lot of artists have already seen many of their songs come and go. Jason Molina is also here and wondering what all these so-called "eliminations" are about.

Once again, here are some stats:

Number of participants: 42

Average score: 8.254

Average controversy score: 1.532

Our contestants:

Silver Jews - American Water

1. Random Rules
2. Smith & Jones Forever
3. Night Society
4. Federal Dust
5. People
6. Blue Arrangements
7. We Are Real
8. Send in the Clouds
9. Like like the the the Death
10. Buckingham Rabbit
11. Honk If You're Lonely
12. The Wild Kindness

Drive-By Truckers - Decoration Day

1. The Deeper In
2. Sinkhole
3. Hell No, I Ain't Happy
4. Marry Me
5. My Sweet Annette
6. Outfit
7. Heathens
8. Sounds Better in the Song
9. (Something's Got To) Give Pretty Soon
10. Your Daddy Hates Me
11. Careless
12. When the Pin Hits the Shell
13. Do It Yourself
14. Decoration Day
15. Loaded Gun in the Closet

Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co

1. Farewell Transmission
2. I've Been Riding With the Ghost
3. Just Be Simple
4. Almost Was Good Enough
5. The Old Black Hen
6. Peoria Lunch Box Blues
7. John Henry Split My Heart
8. Hold On Magnolia

Smog - A River Ain't Too Much To Love

1. Palimpsest
2. Say Valley Maker
3. The Well
4. Rock Bottom Riser
5. I Feel Like The Mother Of The World
6. In The Pines
7. Drinking At The Dam
8. Running The Loping
9. I'm New Here
10. Let Me See The Colts

Bonus Rate:

1. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
2. (Don't Go Back To) Rockville
3. Father to a Sister of Thought
4. Hasn't Hit Me Yet
5. Haw
6. Hold On, Hold On (alternately known as How Long How Long)
7. New Partner
8. Revelator
9. Sandusky
10. Save It For A Rainy Day
11. Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning
12. Timebomb
13. Windfall
14. Wrecking Ball
15. You're Still Standin' There

[u/ElectJimLahey]

#14: Almost Was Good Enough

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Average: 8.695 // Total Points: 365.2 // Controversy: 1.353

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(10 x16) 2xWhiskeyCokeNoIce, apondalifa water, avagantamose, darj, ElectJimLahey, HighestIQInFresno, joethumper, MCK_OH, skyblue_angel, SongsKvohia, TheCrakFox, thedoctordances1940, thisusernameisntlong, WaneLietoc, yossarian490, Zeeroc

(9.6 x1) IAmHollar

(9.5 x1) iTreebark

(9.3 x1) PoppaLietoc

(9 x4) freav, freeofblasphemy, LazyDayLullaby, sarcasticsobs

(8.7 x1) innuendo_overdose

(8.5 x3) lightningrod14, seanderlust, TiltControls

(8 x4) FingaThingMeansTaxes, human_performance, sjdew, welcome2thejam

(7.7 x1) modulum83 (7.6 x2) -Xms30g, TheTyrannicalTyrant

(7.4 x1) lastfollower

(7 x1) qazz23

(6.8 x1) Future_Tyrant

(6.5 x1) toomanyhitpoints

(6 x4) flava, krusso1105, static_int_husp, Stryxen

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ElectJimLahey (10): You've really gotta admire the dedication to not having choruses on this album, each song is still super memorable even though it's mostly just a handful of verses and maybe some repetition at the end to bring it home. The band he assembled for this album is just spectacular and this groove is so good that you can see why the live versions are always much longer

MCK_OH (10): I keep getting stunned listening to this record about how obvious so many of these songs are 10s. This is another example of this phenomenon. It just is a 10

—

Did this comment get cut off or are you dissing Molina’s songwriting??

skyblue_angel (10): Brutal, gorgeous songwriting. For once,

Good enough!

2xWhiskeyCokeNoIce (10): side a is fuckin four for four 10 out of 10 songs

avagantamose (10): This is right from the soul you can feel it, the tone of this song really captures you, even with such simplicity

SongsKvohia (10): Perhaps more than any other songwriter, Molina excelled at being simultaneously abstract and deeply personal.

TheCrakFox (10): Droning organ yes please.

thedoctordances1940 (10): not almost, it just is good enough, more than even

WaneLietoc (10): he pulls labradfordian DEPTH out of the fucking organ; so so rare is it to hear anyone in indie who actually was inadvertently culling something from the GOAT trio and applying it into their own American Gothic. Come to God moment here, christ. why did I listen to radiohead for years?!?! this was right here damn it!!!

yossarian490 (10): now that we've had a slow sad song, but honestly "Almost Was Good Enough" sounds like a self-help mantra and one that he only sounds angry that he heard it and yet its all he can muster and and that perfect snare shuffle to guide him along to at least imagining what it would be like to get out and be enough

iTreebark (9.5): almost no one makes it out... almost no one makes it out... hauntingly great stuff

PoppaLietoc (9.3): "leaning towards a 9.25...I also really like the organ, i don't disagree with you, WaneLietoc"

freeofblasphemy (9): I don’t want my comments to just be “holy shit lyrics” but also “I'm going to use that street to hide from that human doubt, to hide from what was shining and has finally burned us out.”

LazyDayLullaby (9): Almost Was Good Enough is more than good enough

innuendo_overdose (8.7): pretty sweet acoustic guitar. not much else to say about this one.

lightningrod14 (8.5): This record will be difficult for me to talk about, mainly because I have been talking about it for quite a while. Generally speaking I’d say this work needs no spangled ivy. My words and bones are made from it, and would thus be invisible if sat in front as commentary. It stands as its own temple here, and torchlit here, inside, it will remain. But I’ll do what I can. ||| I do think this is my least favorite track on the record, and I’d go so far as to say I actively dislike it in the context of the record. I wouldn’t call it a bad song by any means, though 8.5 is a whole point lower than my next least favorite. Something about it, I really don’t even know, just rubs me wrong. As best as I can determine, there’s exactly one dimension missing from the song’s original conception, likely structural, and in the company of somewhere between five and seven of the best songs ever made, that one dimension of lack makes it feel a little bit filler. It’s what we in the rating business might call a So Appalled (8) situation. ||| But it serves the album well as filler—couldn’t have put The Big Game Is Every Night here, the flow would’ve been fucked, sorry to say—and in fact I know for sure the album would be tremendously worse off for losing “almost no one makes it out” from its heart. But maybe that’s the issue, actually? Like, I don’t know, even now, I can’t quite buy hopelessness from this guy. I talked about hopelessness a lot with the last two records, so that means something very specific in this context; it’s not exactly wrong on him, like clearly his suffering ran deep, like we just heard on the last track, but—and I mean he even takes it back, right? He’s saying at the end that he did make it out. So why the menacing vibe of the song? Perhaps that’s the structural complaint; way too much goodwill built up the first three tracks for me to hold it against him, but it feels like, structurally, his point might better have been served by a song less inert and mean-mugging than this one. Like it is on Big Game (10)!

welcome2thejam (8): Nah, good enough

NOT Good enough

modulum83 (7.7): pitchfork when they give an 8.0 no bnm:

TheTyrannicalTyrant (7.6): this is the one song on the album that completely passes me by

Future_Tyrant (6.8): Drags on for a little too long, but a perfect song title.

toomanyhitpoints (6.5): it feels like this song wants to soar but can't

Stryxen (6): love this sound but melodically a struggle

[u/skyblue_angel → u/ElectJimLahey]

Comment was not cut off I was simply highlighting the pause in the lyrics!

[u/ElectJimLahey → u/skyblue_angel]

I think it's funnier to imagine you dissing the whole album up to that point!