I"m listening through the entire DT discography at the moment and just got to Six Degrees and here are my thoughts so far:
- Awake really didn't age well, probably the worst album of the 90's
- It's a shame "The Way It Used To Be" didn't make it on a official album because that is a Top 5 DT song and their best pop oriented song.
I started doing the same exact thing a few days ago, wanted to listen to the whole catalog again, in chronological order, to see how my opinions/ranking of them would change. I've almost finished listening TOT. However, I don't really agree with what you posted
Some things I noticed listening up to this point:
- Used to like FII more, but listening to all of it again made me realize it drags on some parts. It has some great moments on it, but some other things just don't work as well.
- Also, looks like it was on this album where MP developed his own "signature" sound/playing. On all the previous albums his approach to drumming was different and varied from album to album, while still sounding like MP. FII looks, to me, like the abum where he found the style he liked and just stopped exploring his drumming after it. Though, I enjoy his drumming on Awake/ACOS much more, specially his use of the octobans. FII sounds like he used the same tricks on almost all the songs. It gets tiring after a while.
- SFAM and SDOIT are probably the best albums of their catalog, and definitely the best up to this point (imo). It seemed like that lineup could only make perfect abums like these, but TOT started a downfall imo. To me, listening to an album like TOT after the masterpiece that is SDOIT is a huge disappointment. They completely under-used Jordan, who had insanely good moments on both SFAM and SDOIT (his playing is one of the main aspects why I think these two albums are that good), and had him relegated to mostly doubling the guitar on many songs and playing a few leads/solos .