>Especially compared with their earlier stuff?

Well, it's really a different genre than their earlier stuff--it's college rock, as you said, not punk/post-punk/hardcore. So I love Land Speed Record for what it is, but same with Warehouse.

>Personally, I
>think that while Mould's songs are uniformly strong (¤almost),
>the only good Hart-songs are "¤Back from somewhere" and "She's
>floating away".

"Charity, Chastity" is okay too, IMO, but I feel you. But I'm not a huge Hart fan on the early stuff either, with the exception of his songs on New Day Rising.

But on Warehouse I agree with you that Bob perfects his style of writing--kinda masters what he started on Flip Your Wig--and a few of his tracks on Warehouse are his most accomplished work, to my ears. Songs like "Could You Be the One" and "Friend, You've Got to Fall" are pretty close to pop-rock masterpieces.

>Also, it's possibly the least diverse double-album

Side 4 shouldn't have existed at all, not only for lack of diversity, but for quality.

>I've ever
>heard with song-after-song of 80's college-rock. Compared with
>their earlier albums, there's no hardcore/punk, no ballads or
>acoustic tracks, no experiments or instrumentals, just
>college-rock song after college-rock song. The drumming is
>also uninspired compared with the earlier records.

Not only that, but the production is just freakin' horrible. The trebly shimmer just sucks, and the drum sounds are so bad they confuse me...like, who the fuck engineered this bullshit?

If you've seen or listened to the "Circle of Friends" DVD with Brendan Canty on drums...listening to that is what Warehouse should have sounded like in the first place.

So yeah: love it, but it has problems.