Released January 2013 Europe; Feb. 2013 RoW
Tracklist:
- New Generation Slave
- The Depth of Self-Delusion
- Celebrity Touch
- We Got Used to Us
- Feel Like Falling
- Deprived (Irretrievably Lost Imagination)
- Escalator Shrine
- Coda
Bonus Disc:
- Night Session Part 1
- Night Session Part II
Confession time…and some context. I will say right off the bat: I struggled mightily to review this album when it first came out. I made a few attempts, and even posted some, but frankly none of them ended up worth the time it took to launch Word. It pains me to say that they were pretty much the sort of hagiographic piles of adulatory crap I deplore reading from others, and deep down, even at the time I wrote them, I knew it. But I chose to ignore my gut.
What I think happened was this: Shrine of New Generation Slaves was the first album that Riverside released after I discovered them and became a fan, and I had just spent most of the preceding year immersed in the band’s (and Lunatic Soul’s) discography, listening to almost nothing else, stunned and exhilarated by the discovery of music I had been waiting for all my life. Naturally I had a huge emotional stake in the new material.
When the special blue vinyl pre-order arrived (the first of the several versions to hit my doorstep) and the playing began…well, things started to go south from there. My immediate reaction was: This is not the album I have been waiting for. But because at some level it had to be that album, and the accolades began pouring in from all directions…I suppressed my instincts and spent the next year trying to talk myself into loving it. Even the video accompanying the first single, “Celebrity Touch”, didn’t dismay me as much as it should have.
…But now a couple of years have passed, and I hope I am far enough distanced to deal with SoNGS fairly. The truth is, I don’t love the album, and that is tough to admit. So let’s get this party started.
