On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Aaron Milenski wrote:

> >It's faint praise indeed to call this his best work since at least FLOWERS
> >IN THE DIRT, if not TUG OF WAR,
>
> I am not commenting on Stewart's taste here (since it was his post), but
> merely asking:  is there some sort of  consensus that FLOWERS IN THE DIRT
> and TUG OF WAR are better than CHAOS AND CREATION?  I thought it
> was miles better than those two albums (I always found them the two most
> overrated albums in his ouvre, but that's not really a knock on CHAOS,
> which I realy like a whole lot), and got the impression at time of release
> that most critics felt the same way about CHAOS.

I think that is the general consensus. I have hardly listened to CHAOS
myself since its release. Now, FLOWERS and TUG have their own problems--I
still think half of FLOWERS plus half of OFF THE GROUND would have made a
great album, just as half of TUG plus half of PIPES OF PEACE would
probably have been a good idea--but I could never get into CHAOS. Whereas
I've been listening to the new one for a couple of weeks now and haven't
quite gotten tired of it yet.