Guess What?!?!?!

[who me?]

Ok, now I'm lost. Can someone please explain?

[Ian]

Ah, the Newsboys were my favorite band of my childhood.  I really like Thrive, maybe cuz it was the first CD of theirs I owned.  But everything from Not Ashamed to Thrive is mostly really great stuff.  The worship albums are bad.  I loathe Go.  LOATHE it, I say.

But yeah, favorite songs would be Lost the Plot, Love Liberty Disco, John Woo, The Tide, and I guess a ton of others I'm not thinking of right now.

[who me?]

Today, I don't like them. I'm in a headachy crabby mood, and Newsboys just aggravate that.

I'll probably like them again tomorrow.

[murlough23]

I loathe Go.  LOATHE it, I say.

I wonder if that album might have been better received if not for its timing. It was pretty obviously positioned as a "return to form", the Newsboys trying to recapture their old fans after they got diminishing returns from the worship projects. I tried to ignore that and just evaluate it as if it had been their next release after Thrive, but I still found it to be a bit uneven. I liked the sound, but I couldn't ignore that the lyrics had become much more straightforward and less witty than their classic stuff or even a good amount of the material on Thrive). "Your Love Is Better than Life" was probably the only really good example of a semi-clever lyrics written in the old style. Ironically, though, my favorite two songs on the album were thoroughly non-smart-alecky ("Something Beautiful" and "In Wonder"), so it's not like I think the Steve Taylor-isms are all that the Newsboys are capable of doing well or anything.

NP: "Great in All the Earth", Starfield

[Ian]

The majority of the album just seemed like they were either reluctant to drop the worship theme (yes, I know they did a few worship songs before Adoration, but never as frequently as seen here), or they were trying too desperately to be their old selfs again (I'll never forgive them for stealing their own guitar line from Breakfast for Secret Kingdom).  There wer a few tracks where they seemed to hit a good balance (the first 3, the final track, and maybe a song somewhere in the middle), but overall it just felt way too forced out and uninspired.

I'm hoping Go is just them trying to rediscover themselves; if that's the case, I can understand the mishaps.  But I'm hoping they'll make progress with their next one (which I'v heard they're currently working on? ...haven't really kept up with them lately).

[murlough23]

The majority of the album just seemed like they were either reluctant to drop the worship theme (yes, I know they did a few worship songs before Adoration, but never as frequently as seen here)

Agreed; the lyrical quality of the record was hampered by the simplistic nature of some of the worship-oriented tracks.

or they were trying too desperately to be their old selfs again (I'll never forgive them for stealing their own guitar line from Breakfast for Secret Kingdom).

Yeah, that would be the most blatant example. Don't reference your glory days if the thing that references them can't live up to them.

There wer a few tracks where they seemed to hit a good balance (the first 3, the final track, and maybe a song somewhere in the middle), but overall it just felt way too forced out and uninspired.

The final track is the album's worst, I think. I generally have little patience for "It's gonna be alright"-type songs, and the looped background vocal on that one pushed it far over the edge into annoying-land.

The first three were pretty good, if you can get over the unrealistic silliness in "Wherever We Go".

NP: "Digging My Own Grave", Thrice