After listening to SCW for the first and half for the secont time I (still?) find Cope's new album an honest piece of work - for a semi-retired elderly ex-popstar and ex-enfant terrible of the glorious early 90s. Honest insofar as there's no attempt at glossy production or mainstreamed songwriting.
That may look good at first glance, but lack of producer's ambition can be a two-edged sword. I hail Julian's "fuck you" attitude towards music industry and musical mainstream, but still I wish somebody told him to straighten out some of the earlier songs on the disc and to speed up those following later on. There's lots of musical Copeisms, fake-mellotron melodies, ideas, poetic lyrics - enough to make a brilliant album, but most of it sounds demo-ish or rather casually put together by some kind of "professional amateur".
The lacking youthfull energy of probably Pegga-era tunes was already there on "Citizen Cain'd" or "Dark Orgasm". But what was compensated there by the sheer volume of electric guitar assault leaves this collection of songs a little empty, if not to say lame at times.
Latter-days Odinist Julian was never better than with Hugoth and Mooney looking over his shoulder.
That much for wordplay I will surely give the odd thing another try - probably It'll grow on me like "Autogeddon" did over the years.
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