Man, it must have been hard to be a grunge band back in the early to mid-nineties. No matter what you did, people compared you to either Pearl Jam or Nirvana. It's the fault of the genre, really: grunge emphasizes simplicity. You fiddle with the formula of "simple pop hooks, grimy vocalists, and grimier guitars" too much and you end up in weird places (like chamber rock, or indie rock, or ...) so you really can't do anything but sound like Pearl Jam or Nirvana.

Michael Pitt gets off easy with Pagoda (which I've posted here), because it's been ten years now, since the glory days, and you can release an album that unabashedly worships Nirvana and Pearl Jam and instead of being labeled as derivative bullshit (which Pagoda would be labeled if this were 1994) you're hailed as a revivalist, or at least damned with faint praise on how thoroughly you capture the era's sound.

Seven Mary Three however had the unfortunate pleasure of beating Nickelback to the "gruffy singer alternative-rocky top-40 hit that'll never go away" single with this song, back in 1995, and I loved it, at ten years old, I thought it was fucking awesome. I still do. It's a great song. How Seven Mary Three didn't catch onto whatever bullshit formula Nickelback managed to tap into, I'll never know.

I picked up a promo copy of this album from a used record store in Uptown Whittier when I was a youngin'. I'd write about how I think buying used music (especially promo copies) is unethical but, really, I download music, I have no ethics. Enjoy your Saturday!

This concludes mid-nineties week! Next week will be whatever it will be.