Sometimes, I pick a record that just isn’t for me. That happened today. I found Visiter by The Dodos fairly boring, but I also understand its appeal. Unfortunately for me, this record is an hour long. I can deal with boring, but when you add long to the equation, you get an irritable Jacob.
Eyelids, the third song out of fourteen on Visiter, is where I became certain that I was not going to enjoy this record. Up until that point, I had been on the fence. The first two tracks are essentially sensitive-indie-banjo-rock, which I can deal with from time-to-time—I really like Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes—but this stuff was packing too little of a punch, even for the relatively low-key genre that it falls under. When Eyelids, another soft track, rolled around, I knew that this music was just a little too subtle, even for me.
There are high points on Visiter, but not nearly enough to justify giving it another listen. It opens with Walking, a fairly catchy song that I wouldn’t skip on shuffle. Every now and then, a track has a decent line or cool composition—I really did like Meric Long’s delivery on Winter—but these moments are too few and far between for me to give this full record another listen.
People love The Dodos, and I get why. They’re just not for me. Their style is fairly original, and not painful to listen to. It’s not as if I was dying while waiting for this record to come to an end—I was just really bored. Ultimately, The Dodos are a bit too soft for me.
Swole Ear 
I’ve never given the Dodos a real listen myself, but I saw them about a year ago when they opened for The New Pornographers. I found this review surprising because at the show they were loud, big, and got the crowd moving. It could be you started off on the wrong album? Or maybe they’re just a lot more energetic in the flesh.
That’s very possible. I also may have just been in a bad mood when I listened to it. Who knows. That’s one of the problems with Swole Ear; it’s hard to judge any record fairly after a single listen.