Rating: 7/10
Instant Rock n' Roll Gratification (tm)
Semisonic's vocalist/guitarist Dan Wilson can write a song which slams a hook into your subconscious the moment it starts playing... instant rock n' roll gratification. You'll find yourself humming the tune and singing along to the chorus like you'd known if for years, and it's only after the song ends that you realise it's the first time you've heard it.
Wilson has a sweet gift for melody and thank god he and the other two members of Semisonic - bassist John Munson and drummer/keyboardist Jacob Slichter - are shameless enough to use it, flying in the face of trendy, tepid alterna-rock.
But being self-proclaimed "sound-experiment brainheads," they certainly aren't above marrying a veritable wash of studio gizmo-tinkering with their music's basic mid-western rock premise - sort of like the Byrds via Tom Petty and the Buffalo Springfield through the Flaming Lips. Yet creativity is sometimes also their stumbling block and the arrangements of songs like "No One Else," "f.n.t" and "Delicious" are cluttered with all manner of loops, computer-generated noises and vocal effects, making them seem to date quickly with repeated listenings.
Fortunately elsewhere, producer Paul Fox (who has also worked with XTC, Victoria Williams and 10,000 Maniacs) brings them home to where they remember that all it takes is a guitar, some drums and a bass to make memorable music. And this they accomplish with an instinctive sort of ease, thanks especially to drummer Slichter, who can really kick out the jams when he wants to. The album's best moments then are also its simplest - the quiet, lilting "Temptation" with its eloquent, evocative lyrics, the melancholic "In Another Life" and the Paul Westerberg-ish "Brand New Baby."
"Down in Flames" begins with the unforgettable lines, "It's not the pain I'm used to/ it's feeling like I'm already dead," and then proceeds to drum up so much passion with its ragged distortion and feedback enough to put a smile on even Neil Young's face, that by the song's close, the apparent contradiction between its lyrical disillusionment and its musical exuberance makes perfect rock n' roll sense.
At worst, Semisonic can be criticized for being a little too derivative. But if they're ripping off rock legacies, they're doing it with style, heart and soul, and more than enough talent to make the likes of Collective Soul and the Gin Blossoms look like rank amateurs.
Gerald Tan 1996
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