{"id":39838,"date":"2006-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/kerosene-hat\/"},"modified":"2006-07-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-17T00:00:00","slug":"kerosene-hat","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/kerosene-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerosene Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I still can\u2019t believe there was a time in radio where you could actually be sick of hearing Cracker. The then-inescapable tunes were \u201cGet Off This\u201d and \u201cLow,\u201d both from their 1993 sophomore release Kerosene Hat<\/em>. Cracker enjoyed minor success with \u201cTeen Angst (What the World Needs Now),\u201d the snarling, infectious single off their self-titled debut album, but Kerosene Hat<\/em> was able to capitalize on the \u201canything that sounds remotely alternative is good\u201d radio days of the early 90s. <\/p>\n

Truth be told, David Lowery deserved some of the monetary rewards from the alternative rock explosion of the 90s. Camper Van Beethoven, the band Lowery was in before Cracker, was one of the more influential acts of the late 80s. While Cracker may not have been as revolutionary as Camper Van Beethoven, they were quirky enough to defy categorization. <\/p>\n

Kerosene Hat<\/em> is the sound of a band throwing anything it can to the studio walls and hoping something sticks. The thing is, most of what Cracker threw in Kerosene Hat<\/em> stuck. \u201cLow,\u201d the leadoff track, has a riff that you can\u2019t get out of your head and a chorus that\u2019s just as catchy: \u201cBein\u2019 with you girl \/ It\u2019s like being low \/ hey hey hey it\u2019s like being low.\u201d Right after that song, it\u2019s anything goes. Optimistic half-slacker, half-motivational speeches \u201cGet Off This\u201d do-si-do with country-influenced tracks (way before the alt-country craze took off). And to close the album (at least, according to the liner notes), an amazing cover of the Grateful Dead\u2019s \u201cLoser.\u201d <\/p>\n

However, \u201cLoser\u201d isn\u2019t the final track on the album. Kerosene Hat<\/em> was one of the first major albums to take full advantage of the \u2018hidden track\u2019 function in CDs -\u2013 ballooning the CD\u2019s length to 99 songs (most of them after track 15 utter silence) and putting three songs on as \u201chidden tracks.\u201d Arguably the most beloved hidden track is the six-minute-plus ode to bohemian listlessness \u201cEurotrash Girl.\u201d The song details one of the worst weekends you could ever have in a foreign country: having your car broken into, getting ripped off by a junkie, getting a case of the crabs, calling your folks for money only to have them hang up on you; but somehow, the chorus of \u201cYeah, I\u2019ll search the world over for my angel in black\u201d still leaves you hopeful. <\/p>\n

True to Lowery\u2019s punk roots, Kerosene Hat<\/em>\u2019s DIY feel reaches all the way to the recording studio. The band proudly states they built the recording studio themselves (the Soundstage in Pioneertown, CA). It\u2019s ironic that the band sweated and toiled to make this studio and used the studio to record a bunch of stoner odes to aimlessness. <\/p>\n

Kerosene Hat<\/em> is far from a perfect album. Their second hit, \u201cGet Off This\u201d wears out its welcome after the third listen and some experiments had to be placed in the album for the band\u2019s amusement but not for fans (see \u201cHi-Desert Biker Meth Lab\u201d). But even with these missteps, Kerosene Hat<\/em> deserves to be in the upper echelons of the \u201cgreat moments of college rock in the 90s,\u201d not the \u2018buy used for $0.01′ graveyard, which it is currently inhabiting on Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7462],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-39838","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cracker","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39838"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}