I knew it would be that one too.
I'll get *some* slack for this one. But sev feels me...
so y'know, there was basically pre-Nirvana/Nirvana/post-Nirvana "alternative". At least in my mind at the time. Right? And one of my favorite post-Nirvana bands in high school was Everclear. Probably the cool thing would have been to just realize that THIS album was fucking great. But no, I was super into them. Had everything I could find - World Of Noise, White Trash Hell, some promo stuff, saw them live, everything. Loved them. And I still have a weird soft spot but that's talk for another day. Because today I'll talk about Sparkle & Fade which is a fucking excellent album that I assume most dismiss because, well, it's Everclear. But this was before they really aimed for radio play. This shit is just really good - ahem - post-Nirvana alternative rock. "Electra Made Me Blind" is a killer opener. Then "Heroin Girl" and "You Make Me Feel Like A Whore" - total rockers. Great start. And if you ignore the overplayed "Santa Monica", which is fine, then there's plenty more great shit here. "Strawberry" is gorgeous. Just totally gorgeous. It's such a sad heroin song that manages to be upbeat with it's "don't fall down now/you will never get up" refrain counterbalanced against the brutal line "ten long years in a straight line/ they fall like water/ yes I guess I fucked up again." Wow. "The Twistinside" is another huge standout that nobody really mentions. But that cool lead and how it all builds up to the end. Plus Art made a bunch of lyrics that don't rhyme at all sound really natural - "breathing fire doesn't look good on a resume/but neither does anything else we do" - Great. There's some borderline um Cali-punk I guess? - with "Chemical Smile" and "Nahalem", and closer "My Sexual Life" is a fun semi-somber piece about being promiscuous in a small town. I don't know. There was plenty of pop-punk coming out of California at the time. But somehow this album from an Oregon band feels more like the summers I remember.