let your dim light review

soulasylum99 · Post by **soulasylum99** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 9:57 am

I just saw the allmusic review for let your dim...which is not very positive:

"Following the same pattern and approach as Grave Dancer's Union, Let Your Dim Light Shine firmly positions Soul Asylum as a mainstream rock & roll band. Gone are the breakneck punk rockers, replaced with searching, introspective ballads and socially conscious mid-tempo rockers. In itself, that wouldn't be a problem, but Dave Pirner has taken the weight of the world upon his shoulders, which becomes apparent from the lyrics. Pirner's lyrics are so overwrought that they not only approach self-parody, they go completely beyond it. Every lyric is weighted with such self-importance, making it easy to overlook the relative merits of the music, which isn't quite as impressive as that of their previous records."

and on candys review appears the following:

"And Candy From a Stranger is better than the near-disastrous Let Your Dim Light Shine, which was dogged by such embarrassments as "Misery." Nothing on Candy is as bad as "Misery"..."

My point is: do u feel like let your dim is a near-disastrous record??, cause I think its great and i felt really dissapointed when I read this...why do u think they wrote such negative review? would you feel embarrassment if u wrote Misery??...

What do u think??

PD: sorry for mmy bad english

sheryl · Post by **sheryl** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:14 am

It took me a few listens to get into dim light, though not for the reasons stated in that review. where GDU and everything prior to it were punky and aggressive, dim light had a decided country flavor that i wasn't at all sure i liked. my first thought on hearing it was "hmmmm......yeah. interesting." but it did grow on me and for the most part i like it.

i loath candy.

i think they were so off the mark there it's ludicrous.

CrazyLittleWoman · Post by **CrazyLittleWoman** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:22 pm

Hearing "Misery" made me buy Let Your Dim Light Shine. And the lyrics of the songs on Dim Light made me fall for Soul Asylum. I still love that album. Obviously, I could not disagree more with that review.

Why did they write such a negative review? Probably because it wasn't what the reviewer was expecting next from Soul Asylum. Possibly the reviewer is one of those who wishes SA had spent the rest of their career re-making Made to Be Broken and resents the band exploring other musical genres.

Or, most likely, it's just part of the post-Grave Dancer's Union, post-Grammy backlash in which nothing Dave Pirner or Soul Asylum did was going to be right.

"Following the same pattern and approach as Grave Dancer's Union, Let Your Dim Light Shine firmly positions Soul Asylum as a mainstream rock & roll band. Gone are the breakneck punk rockers, replaced with searching, introspective ballads and socially conscious mid-tempo rockers."

This seems to be a not-too-subtle way of calling Soul Asylum sellouts, which was the common accusation after the success of Grave Dancer's Union. It's such a predictable reaction that by now bands probably just brace themselves for it as an inevitability.

It's stupid.

But, no, I don't think Dim Light is a near-disastrous record. I don't think Candy From A Stranger is a better album than Dim Light. And "Misery" is not an embarrassment. Pirner and Soul Asylum have nothing to apologize for in either "Misery" or Let Your Dim Light Shine.

soulasylum99 · Post by **soulasylum99** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:53 pm

Personally, I think that Misery its a great song, but sometimes when I listen to it, I feel like its the runaway train from let your dim: both balads, arpeggiated intro, verse, bridge, chorus, outro...I dont know what u think but sometimes I think they are pretty similar and more than once I ask myself If they tried to repeat a hit like runaway...

AlyssaJones · Post by **AlyssaJones** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:37 pm

I think by this point in Soul Asylum's career, the only people whose opinions matter about their work are their real fans, not the opinions of some guy who's paid to write reviews of thousands of albums.

And LYDLS is a great album. Maybe not as good as The Silver Lining or And the Horse They Rode In On, but I think it's great. ...except for Caged Rat. What in the world was Dave smoking when he wrote that song? Not that it's bad, it's just really, really weird.

Closer · Post by **Closer** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:46 pm

soulasylum99 wrote:Personally, I think that Misery its a great song, but sometimes when I listen to it, I feel like its the runaway train from let your dim: both balads, arpeggiated intro, verse, bridge, chorus, outro...I dont know what u think but sometimes I think they are pretty similar and more than once I ask myself If they tried to repeat a hit like runaway...

I never considered Misery a ballad but I understand what you're saying about it sounding like a hit. It does have that catchy chorus but I doubt that they were "trying to write a hit" or something like that.

It took me a few listens too to get into the album and now I think that it has some filler on it but also some of the best songs that they've written. I think a lot of reviews at the time weren't very positive and that they lost popularity after it because it wasn't as accessible as GDU and many probably didn't give the album a real chance.

lune ellise · Post by **lune ellise** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:39 pm

Let us leave Soul Asylum's "intentions" for making the album (or any album) for a while. I do not think it is the audience's business to even consider those personal musings, and I do not think Dave and the rest of the gang obliges us to be bothered with their music crusade. So, no, I'm not going to consider their fame and other people's expectations in this post.

The good thing about Let Your Dim Light Shine is that it is diverse that everyone with unique tastes can somewhat enjoy the record. The bothersome thing about catering everyone is that a listener would dwell on his musical tastes that he would eventually skip those songs he does not like. In other words, the album is not solid and its entirety is not important. Probability would be a problem for LYDLS.

Dave Pirner's songwriting skills has improved at this point. I have no qualms for Misery. It's a song with honest lyrics and catchy chorus. However, some songs in the album were overwritten that it sounds like Dave is constantly whining about everything. Again, it depends on taste: It is just my personal preference not to enjoy String Of Pearls much.

There's also nothing wrong with leaning towards mainstream rock - but I like mine with a bit of imperfection. For me, these subtle mistakes are easter eggs for a devoted fan. Sadly, there are no surprises in store for me in LYDLS.

For the sake of comparison, I think Candy From A Stranger is a better album than LYDLS, but not because of the hasty assumptions of the reviewer in AllMusic. It is unfair to compare CFAS to LYDLS or vice versa. Also, I do not think that LYDLS sounds similar to Grave Dancers Union. This generalization surprised me the most in the review.

edabbiati · Post by **edabbiati** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:26 am

"Let Your Dim Light Shine" is easily my favourite SA record.

I love the pacing of the record, the song order and the overall feel the album has. I always felt that the record came out 2-3 years too early to be fully appreciated because it missed out on the huge Americana/ Alt.Country insurgence of 1997-1998 with Whiskeytown, Wilco and others...

It pre-dated that movement by a couple of years.

The album was ambitious in the various styles it contained...crawl / Caged rat side by side with misery and bittersweet hears...string of pearls was classic pirner lyrics..

Nothing to Write home about and I did my best were perfect closers

The one I listen to the most

lune ellise · Post by **lune ellise** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:35 am

edabbiati wrote:"Let Your Dim Light Shine" is easily my favourite SA record.

Hey edabbiati! You might want to vote LYDLS for the best SA album, or you could also vote for your favorite song in LYDLS. Welcome to the board!

sheryl · Post by **sheryl** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:50 pm

I wonder if "Misery" caused some backlash not because it had "hit" written all over it, but because it's content, especially when combined with the video, just wasn't something they could get away with.

I remember hearing it a lot on the radio,and liking it,but not taking anything in particular from it, and then seeing the video and suddenly grasping what the song was actually about. I thought "Ok, so Dave just totally bitchslapped the music industry. Are they gonna let him get away with it?"

I've never really thought they did, in fact, let him.

I wondered at the time how many of the negatives spouted about that record were honestly musically based, and how many of them had to do with people being irritated over the first single.

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