When it comes to acoustic albums, sometimes there\u2019s too much of a good thing. On their sixth album, \u201890s alt rock superstars the Toadies returns with a different tactic. On Heretics<\/i>, they\u2019ve taken some of their most well loved songs and redone them in a different light; some have horns and the majority is done slightly acoustic, with some electric guitar here and there. On the downside, there are only three brand new songs, which is a bit of a shame because the last album, 2012\u2019s Play. Rock. Music.<\/i> was one of their best ever. \u201cIn The Belly Of A Whale,\u201d one of the new tracks, is really strong and consistent with material from the last album \u2013 it is the best track here, period.<\/p>\n
Turning the epic \u201cTyler\u201d from Rubberneck<\/i> into a piano-driven folk song seems rather unnecessary if you ask me. Just doesn\u2019t seem like it was something we needed. It was already a good song \u2013 what did they think doing something different to it was going to do? \u201cBeside You\u201d from 2012 is already a great song; it didn\u2019t need to be redone three years later acoustically. One of the most interesting things is the halfway decent cover of Blondie\u2019s disco classic \u201cHeart Of Glass.\u201d Unfortunately, the album is unable to offer anything else the least bit remotely interesting; it\u2019s just disappointment instead.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest shock is the acoustic version of their biggest hit, \u201cPossum Kingdom,\u201d whose reinvention takes a lot of the bite out of it and renders it like a damn ballad, which it never was and shall never be. The most heartless addition to the record is the addition of horns to \u201cBackslider.\u201d I\u2019m sorry, but adding horns to \u201cBackslider\u201d does not a good song make.<\/p>\n
Now, bands have proven that they can do acoustic albums well (like Alkaline Trio), but they have also proven that they can totally blow and not make it interesting at all (like P.O.D.). Unfortunately, the Toadies has added themselves to the latter category. I had bad feelings about this record as soon as I heard about it and I\u2019ll be damned if my feelings were met head-on. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason why certain songs are classics in their original state and to me, that\u2019s how they should remain. If you\u2019re not a massive Toadies fan like I am, you\u2019re much better suited to go check out the original, better versions of these tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8387],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-44281","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-toadies","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44281"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}