I wrote exactly the same without reading your post

It's hard to find a fault in the rest of the band so to me they've given their best like they always do. The huge difference is that Jon means it when he sings. Of course it doesn't hurt that there are some lyrics that just blow my mind, but how many times it's been discussed that if they released TD as it is but with the amount of passion WAN had (zero lol), everybody would hate most of it and tear it to pieces, specially the weakest lyrics? Why the hell do I like New Years Day when similar songs in recent releases made me cringe and I never listened to them again? Why didn't I care about songs that have very solid lyrics and you can see they put an extra effort on them (LH bonus tracks would be the perfect example)?

The answer is pretty simple. Anybody can write a nice lyric. Anybody can get a thesaurus and turn a simple lyric into something poetic. Even good metaphors are not that difficult to create. But words are just words and it takes more than a good voice to make that lyric come alive, to have the listener feel it and believe it. One thing that Jon always had was selling whatever he sung. Even the worst cliché. Their most vocal critics had no problem admitting that Jon was good at making you believe the songs. He lost that magic touch, or didn't care. Or whatever was going on with the band held him back, it's true that could be another possible scenario.

So yeah, it was that simple. Welcome back Jon, don't ever leave again.