So, I'm almost through The Best of Times. Honestly, at least for me, its a forgotten album because it just doesn't sound very memorable. A Rite of Passage, at least for me, is clearly the best song on the record. Wither seems like a b-side (OK, lets write a ballad that could be a single). The Shattered Fortress and The BEst of Times, while I get what they were doing...were really personal to MP, and I think written in a way, lyrically, that was very selfish. Not meaning that in a negative way. Just saying that MP wrote the lyrics for himself, and they are very specific, as opposed to being something that translates so that everyone can appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, I "understand" what he is saying, but I don't have an emotional connection to it.
Let's use The Best of Times. I lost my Dad recently. This song was about MP losing his Dad and what MP wanted to say as a tribute to his Dad. I feel absolutely no emotional connection to it. Whereas, a song like A Change of Seasons, I connect massively to that, even though the song is about MP in the wake of losing his mother and how he lost his mother. The song was written so that people could connect to it regardless of their personal circumstance. The Best of Times doesn't achieve that. I am glad MP wrote it for himself. He needed to. But it doesn't have much staying power, at least for me. I don't connect with it.
With two songs like that, smack dab in the middle, along with a ballad that seems forced, an opening song that many people rate much higher than I do, there's not much left. I'm halfway through Count of Tuscany as I type this, and its the first time I've listened to that song in nine years. The same feeling has struck me. The story isn't engaging, and the music just...there are good ideas, but its too mashed up for me to really enjoy it. Again, not every song needs the structure of something like Metropolis.
I think the overall issue, for me, with BC&SL, is that the band had nothing left to say in the way in which they were saying it. They were creatively spent. And quite honestly, I felt that way since I first heard Octavarium, and how they recycled all these modern (and older) influences into a new studio album, instead of looking for inspiration from within. People love that record, I can't stand it. BC&SL is like the last gasp for me. Count of Tuscany has some incredible parts to it, but the song itself...no. And the album, again, just a band really not having much left to say.
MP's leaving was the best thing to happen to them (AT THAT TIME) because it spurred some creativity, and probably some personal motivation to put out some amazing stuff. And while I was not the biggest fan of ADToE, or the DT-self-titled, they were light years better than BC&SL. Then John had his "Disney moment," and then we got the incredible (at least for me) Distance Over Time, which much like Fates Warning's Theories of Flight, captures everything great about the band's past, puts it in a blender, and out came a record of songs that really were inspired by the past, and what they did well, but in a very fresh and vibrant way.
So BC&SL...quite honestly, I think its been forgotten (at least for me) because it simply isn't that good.