Leave it to the Gin Blossoms\u2014the band that offered us a New Miserable Experience<\/i> and then told us Congratulations I\u2019m Sorry<\/i>\u2014to leave me feeling ambivalent about their new album.<\/p>\n
The Blossoms\u2019 stellar 1992 debut arrived in the midst of a truly miserable period in the band members\u2019 lives.\u00a0 Even as the group was completing work on the album, their friend, lead guitarist, nominal bandleader and raging alcoholic Douglas Hopkins was spiraling out of control, to the point where he could no longer perform and the rest of the band felt compelled to replace him.\u00a0 Months later, just as the album containing several of the best songs he ever wrote was climbing the charts, Hopkins killed himself.<\/p>\n
The debut album the Gin Blossoms produced under those trying circumstances was nothing short of brilliant.\u00a0 It was full of brutally honest, edgy songwriting, juxtaposing buoyant power-pop music with lyrics rife with disappointment and despair.\u00a0 Their sophomore album, 1996\u2019s Congratulations I\u2019m Sorry<\/i>, cut with \u201cnew guy\u201d (now 17-year veteran) Scott Johnson on lead guitar, was strong in many of the same respects, but in the wake of that album and tour, the band splintered, as the chaos and pressure caught up with them and remaining chief songwriters Robin Wilson (lead vocals) and Jesse Valenzuela (guitar \/ harmony vocals) began pulling in different directions.<\/p>\n
No Chocolate Cake<\/i> is the second studio album the band has issued since reuniting in 2002.\u00a0 Like 2006\u2019s Major Lodge Victory<\/i>, it has tremendous surface appeal.\u00a0 It still has that fuel-injected jangle, Wilson\u2019s keening lead vocals still match up beautifully with Valenzuela\u2019s breathy harmonies, and bassist Bill Leen and latter-day drummer John Richardson still drive the songs like Indy 500 pace cars.\u00a0 After just two listens, several of these songs dug their hooks into my cranium and refused to leave.\u00a0 And yet\u2014and here comes the ambivalence\u2014there\u2019s something missing, something that I suspect the band gladly left behind.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
What\u2019s missing is the almost visceral anguish heard on their first two albums. The \u201990s Gin Blossoms were messy and dangerous, balancing out the sweetness of their hooks and harmonies with their damaged, downcast lyrics.\u00a0 In the absence of that sense of manic depressive melodrama, No Chocolate Cake<\/i>, like Major Lodge Victory<\/i>, features a series of bouncy, upbeat numbers that are addictively enjoyable without being nearly as affecting.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The most memorable among the heavier songs is opener \u201cDon\u2019t Change For Me,\u201d which offers a strong hook and steady drive supporting a slightly clunky positive-thinking lyric that, while unquestionably sincere, feels distinctly out of character for a band that used to sing about tied hands and lost horizons.\u00a0 The other obvious shot at radio fodder here, \u201cMiss Disarray,\u201d similarly has its moments in the harmony-heavy chorus and Johnson\u2019s concise solo, but ends up feeling a bit calculated.<\/p>\n
Much of the album in fact feels overly polished and rather distant, and one possible explanation can be found in the liner notes, where you learn that Valenzuela and Wilson recorded their respective songs in separate studios in separate states, Wilson in Tempe and Valenzuela in LA, where the latter partnered up with co-producer\/co-writer Danny Wilde of the Rembrandts.\u00a0 The end result lacks the sense of organic interplay and careening energy that powered the first two albums.<\/p>\n
Of course, these guys are way too talented to deliver an album that\u2019s less than entertaining.\u00a0 \u201cWave Bye Bye\u201d is one of the group\u2019s finer mid-tempo tunes, a steady-burning beauty in the vein of \u201c\u2019Til I Hear It From You\u201d or \u201cAs Long As It Matters.\u201d\u00a0 Later on, the jangle-licious \u201cSomewhere Tonight\u201d bears faint echoes of 1991\u2019s \u201cAngels Tonight,\u201d a mid-tempo, harmony-rich tune that spotlights Wilson and Valenzuela\u2019s terrific vocal work.\u00a0 \u201cIf You\u2019ll Be Mine\u201d finds the GBs trying something entirely new for them, a piano ballad that once again highlights the vocal interplay at the core of the band\u2019s sound, with Johnson delivering some very pretty guitar work near the end.<\/p>\n
The rockers are more often where the album falters.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m Ready\u201d sounds like the theme song to a 1980s \u201cgo for it\u201d\/coming-of-age sports movie, complete with echoed chorus vocals and baldly anthemic ambitions\u2014what it\u2019s doing on a Gin Blossoms album, I can\u2019t really say.\u00a0 (The crime of crimes, though, comes when they fade out Johnson\u2019s best guitar solo on the whole album\u2026)\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the solid thumper with sweet guitar-drum dialogue that nonetheless overstays its welcome, \u201cGo Crybaby\u201d\u2014also the victim of one of the two glaring typos on the back cover of this amateurishly-packaged disc.\u00a0 Toward the end, \u201cDead Or Alive On The 405\u201d is a pure goof, a lighthearted novelty tune with prominent horns. \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s got a hook that could land a 200-pound marlin\u2014and I can\u2019t figure out yet if I love it or hate it. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s set that ambivalence aside for just a moment at the end here, though, and speak plainly. \u00a0I\u2019m a longtime fan of the Gin Blossoms.\u00a0 I\u2019ve met most of the band and had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Valenzuela a few years ago.\u00a0 On a personal level, I\u2019m really glad the guys are happier than they used to be; they seem like good people, and they\u2019ve worked hard to achieve the success they\u2019ve enjoyed.\u00a0 And, in the final analysis, No Chocolate Cake<\/i> is everything you could ask for from a power-pop album\u2014melodic, entertaining and catchy as hell, a fine example of the Gin Blossoms\u2019 craft. \u00a0It\u2019s just that\u2014and you hate to say something like this out loud, but there it is\u2014their pain is what made them interesting.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5734],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-42138","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gin-blossoms","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42138","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42138"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42138"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}