#7 The Shores of Molokai
The Shores of Molokai
The 5 Masters of Decapitation
Mannequins Are My Friend
Smile Without a Face
Hatchet
Melting Man
My 5-star tracks were identical to yours, except I have
Stumps on Stilts instead of your
Smile Without a Face; which I don't rate quite as highly (4-star). The rest of the tracks are solid 4-star in my eyes. So we're in pretty firm agreement here...
#8 Racks
Telekinite
Asbury Park Boardwalk
Sunbursts
The Patrolman (best song!)
They are the four 5-star tracks I have too! The rest, again, are all solid 4-star tracks for me.
Patrolman and
Sunbursts are lovely, lovely tracks; real keepers, that I come back to a lot...
#9 March of the Slunks
Magellan's Maze
Burying Toys
Malbert's Strut
The Robot Who Lost Its Head
Thud
Satellite Invaders
Ghost Coop
Wow, total agreement again! These are all my 5-star tracks too; although I do quite dig
Vault too (granted it's just a bit of two minute nonsense). Still love it personally...
Racks has the least amount of songs mentioned, but all of these are over three minutes (belonging to the longest ones from the record) and they were really, really cool (among the best from all these albums). So this pike is probably my favourite of the first nine.
Racks is excellent all-in. The highs are pretty special.
I liked all these three pikes more than any pike he did before, although It's Alive is not far behind.
Indeed. This is the first (of a few) awesome runs of album in the
Pikes series. Did you note the release dates?
Pikes #8, 9, & 10 were all released on the same day. He clearly wrote all of these at the same time; they all have the same production feel to them.
I rate
It's Alive, like you, (nearly?) up there too, but probably not quite as good. I like
3' Clearance too, although I know you weren't quite as impressed. Still, these albums all came out over the space of a year or so... not forgetting that he released
Electric Sea (a regular album, not a
Pike) between #5 & #6. You should check that out next, just for something a little different...