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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Midwestern Dirt

[#] Sayonara (2020)

Reviewed August 18, 2023

Passing along into the afterlife.

Remember kids: sucking up to indie bands gets you everything. Two years after my glowing review of Down the Stairs and to the Left, the Midwestern-in-chief Patrick Kapp (last name change?) stumbled across it and I haven't been able to stop him sending me shirts and records since. (I'm kidding, he's offered twice and both times I've highly appreciated it.) That said, is being friends with the guy in the band affecting my reviews at all? Can I continue to be objective? (I am a person with an unspellable name on the Internet. I have never been objective.) I can say this much: Sayonara is a very good record, but in the wake of what was to come, it feels transitional: Midwestern toning down the mood for the songs, a very good step, just one with uneven results.

Whereas Down the Stairs drifted in a sea of dusty reverb, Sayonara is remarkably direct. There's still dreamy guitars and vocals on it, but the band does a lot fewer slow-burning codas and the mix doesn't marinate in effects quite as heavily, leading to stark, catchy moments like "Milk & Sugar" and the much-improved Leonard Cohen cover "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes". The issue is the directness exposes some underwritten cuts like "Handshake Love", and at nine songs over 40 minutes, having a ten minute outro suite where a five minute medley would've worked much better feels wasteful. I don't want to be negative, though, and Sayonara is still two-thirds winners; "Iceland" and "Black Lotus" in particular are chilly, tightly-wound nuggets of mourning. I bet they'd be even better on a really good live album with his new backing band. Hint hint, Patrick.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Siren Song", "Black Lotus", "After the Movies"	"Iceland"	"Handshake Love"
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