On their sophomore record, Virginia\u2019s emmet swimming made one of the best alt rock records of the late \u201890s. There are so many great tracks here and the band was firing on all cylinders.<\/p>\n
Hooking up with producer Don Dixon, the band really had honed their songwriting, and with a new bass player in tow, the musicianship was cranked up a notch, too. \u201cArlington\u201d has one of the catchiest riffs ever heard on alt rock radio. Believe me, the riff will be lodged in your head long after the disc is done. Other tracks have a similar feeling, such as \u201cFake Wood Trim\u201d and the classic \u201cParking Lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only nagging thing about the disc is that the songs could\u2019ve been longer. \u201cSellout\u201d is a great track but it\u2019s less than three minutes long. It doesn\u2019t feel as strong as it could\u2019ve been as a result of its briefness. Same thing goes for \u201c17 Hours,\u201d which features some great vocals from Todd Watts but because it feels too short, it doesn\u2019t really reach its full potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cWake\u201d and \u201cBoston\u201d are two of the album\u2019s erstwhile ballads and they come across very well and are two of the most notable tracks here. Both tracks show how far the band had come from their first record.<\/p>\n
Not every track is a winner. \u201cBullet In Your Hand\u201d is one that goes nowhere and almost drags the record down. But it\u2019s the real strength of songs like \u201cArlington\u201d and \u201cWake\u201d that really make the album so good.<\/p>\n
The band would record one more major label record before going into a recording hiatus. They have had two records of new material since 2000. This is without a doubt the best sonic representation of everything the band was capable of, and easily one of the best records to come out of VA in the last twenty-five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9783],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-44411","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-emmet-swimming","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44411","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\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44411"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}