I've been a fan since the first album, and I love and hate Train in equal measure.
'Drops Of Jupiter' is great all-round album, but 'For Me, It's You' takes the prize. Massively underrated and underplayed by the band, it's got all the pop hooks of the later stuff, and the soul and honesty of the first two albums. Brilliant.
I ****ing hate 'Save Me San Francisco'. It's horrible. Produced and polished to within an inch of it's life, it sounds like a X-Factor finalist album. Bland. I know these are more 'production' points, but the songs themselves too are so poor when compared in total to any of their previous work. It's REO Speedwagon for the modern generation, lyrics and arrangements that make me cringe. It's not even 'AOR by numbers', its safer than that. Nothing like the quality that i know they are capable of.
(although, i will admit that 'Hey Soul Sister' is a fantastic pop single.)
I saw them live for the first time last year and it was such a let down. Yeah, Pat's voice is great and he's really likeable. But have you ever been to a gig and thought '****ing hell, they've played all the songs i hate?'. Welcome to my world. A setlist that concentrated enormously on the sub-standard new material, nothing from 'FM,IY', and choice tracks from early days criminally overlooked. It just wasn't my night!
