which IIRC, is a first for any DT album to not feature any full on ballads
I'd say WDADU fits this description too but, yeah, 2 out of 15
I think this has been discussed before, but weren’t we just recently talking about how this lineup has now existed for a longer period of time than the SFAM lineup? That just blows my mind.
SFAM lineup: 1999-2010 - 11 years
MM lineup: 2010 - 2021 - 11 years
Just a few more months and the current lineup will be the longest running DT lineup ever. Wow.
For JP's solo album MP said that JP pushed him in certain areas out of his comfort zone and I can't remember the song but I do remember thinking, hey that's an MM riff. 16th notes on the ride I think but some of the players can correct me.
TV has some of the most refreshing drum parts MP's done in a long long long time. Why? Because of the bolded part on your post. JP made Mike play outside of his usual bag of tricks and also let's remember a couple of those tracks were played live with MM years before, so that sort of style got printed into the song arrangements anyway.
Then they went straight to LTE3 with MP as one of the writers/arrangers/collaborators instead of just a session drummer (like for TV) and what do we get? The same old bag of tricks. Same year, same studio, same player, and the differences are quite noticeable (IMO, of course).