In 1974, when he published the collection of poems called ''Where the Sidewalk Ends,'' his work was compared to that of Dr. It was not until publication of ''The Giving Tree,'' a story about a tree that surrenders its shade, fruit, branches and finally its trunk to a boy in order to make him happy, that Mr. This yarn about a lion who acquired a hunter's gun and practiced until he became a good enough shot to join the circus, was only a moderate success. Silverstein's career as a children's author began in 1963 with the publication of ''Uncle Shelby's Story of Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back'' (Harper). In 1988, when several of those plays were packaged as ''Wild Life'' and were produced at the Vanguard Theater in Manhattan, Frank Rich, in his review in The New York Times, suggested that writing for the theater ''may eventually prove his most fruitful career to date.'' In addition to his writings for children, he contributed cartoons to Playboy magazine for many years and wrote nine plays for adults. Silverstein was also the author of the children's classic ''The Giving Tree'' (Harper, 1964). Shocker: misery isn’t a whole lot of fun.Mr. Heaviness can’t obscure blandness: moreover, heaviness can’t excuse yet another forced chorus melody when it is unaccompanied by the band’s trademark riffage. While Misery Made Me might be a better album than A Beautiful Place to Drown, it also presents a more explicitly depressing listen: it functions as confirmation that the once admirably reliable Silverstein aren’t capable of writing a consistently good record anymore. ‘Ultraviolet’s chorus is a highly enjoyable slice of pop rock ‘Cold Blood’ provides a good canvas for Shane Told’s vocals if little else ‘Misery’ builds up to a somewhat unexpected climax in spite of its dreadfully uninspired lyrics. Save for the aforementioned ‘Die Alone’, its best moments are mostly that: scattered moments.
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In spite of this, Misery Made Me is a perfectly listenable album. Elsewhere, ‘It’s Over’ relies too heavily on an uninspired riff while ‘Don’t Wait Up’ underuses its excellent riff, perfectly exemplifying the album’s incompetence: the right ingredients might be there, but Silverstein seem to have lost the recipe. The atmosphere the band are clearly shooting for simply isn’t there, as no element is given ample time and space to develop into something endearing. Following the deeply inspiring lyrics “ I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care” with a screm’d “ YEAH!” doesn’t exactly mask ‘Our Song’s glaring shortcomings similarly, ‘The Altar/Mary’ shoots itself in the foot with a squirt gun by contrasting excellently intense verses with a highly questionable effect-laden chorus. Sure, the Canadians are still capable of delivering an absolute banger in the form of ‘Die Alone’, but the majority of Misery Made Me sees the band masking bland songs with larger-than-life production choices and other unconvincing trickery. Key word: marginally.Īs the second helping of the roaring 20s progress, it’s becoming painfully clear that Silverstein just… aren’t that great anymore. While the brand new Misery Made Me is notably better than its slightly older brother, the improvement is not due to the new record being heavier and less pop-centric rather, it’s because the songwriting is marginally better. Even though I am an incredibly brilliant and humble visionary, I was only somewhat correct. Two years ago, I speculated that the average A Beautiful Place to Drown was merely an unnecessary documentation of Silverstein draining all their pop sensibilities into a project before returning to bigger and better things. Review Summary: canadian weekend, pt 1: diminishing returns