you can try to mimick the songs in standard and you'll get an "approximated" sound or version, but some of the subtilties that you get from strings tuned in unison and octaves apart you can't exactly achieve in standard tuning unless you have octopus hands and monkey fingers.
and on the last two albums they've gone back to using more of the older tunings that are more open, (ie pattern recognition, paper cup exit).
to call it a gimmick is pretty off base, as well as saying that the alt. tunings serve little purpose, they do serve alot of purpose i alot can be done in Thurston's G tuning that can't be done in standard and vice versa... and thats what he has choosen to do. Their tunings at first do seem weird but for studied guitarists it really isn't because alt. tunings have been used for a long long time by a wide variety of guitar players across multiple genres.
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