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Day Three Hundred Sixteen (Year Three)

So, yeah, Grinning Streak showed up tonight.  After I got home from work, but hey, at least it showed up today.  I put it on the stereo after dinner... first time I've done that with a record in a very long time. 

When their last album came out, three years ago, I thought it was okay, but not up to their usual standard.  Looking back, that was understandable.  Steven Page had just left the band, they were undertaking the transformation from a 5 piece group to a 4 piece group, things were just flat out heavy for them at that point.  "Wait for the next one," I told anyone who would listen, "the next record will be epic."  Well, it took them three years, but they proved me right.

 The new disc is a major return to form, with a good number of acoustic flavored pop numbers mixed in throughout the albums twelve tracks.  Favorites among those include the lead single, "Boomerang," "Odds Are," and "Give It Back To You," the last of which echoes the fantastic "Told You So," from Stunt.

Sometimes it's just good to buy a new record by a favorite artist, and be able to see the band you fell in love with in the first place.  It's like reconnecting with an old friend and finding that the experiences in between haven't changed them, they've only served to highlight just how great they were in the first place.

This record won't come out of my listening rotation for a long, long time.

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