i kinda agree - it blew my mind listening to Tell Tale Signs and realizing that he ditched the beautiful, melodic take of “Someday Baby” for the utterly generic blues-rock version.

i listened to “Highlands” again last year while coming down off acid and it was incredibly funny to me - the whole song being like “i’m miserable, i’m old, i’ve got nothing to say, let me tell you about trying to order breakfast for 5 minutes” and by the end he’s basically saying “eh it’s ok, i’ll figure something out, we all got through this song together.” and then by the time of Love and Theft he’s got a whole new persona and is having a blast.