Gas Giants
From Beyond the Back Burner

THE REVIEW

Three-fifths of the Gin Blossoms, including lead vocals and guitar, reunited at the end of the century and put out a no-frills album, all guitars, no fuss. To play, to pass the time, or to start over, whatever the starting point was.

Apart from grunge, the Gin Blossoms have played all of America's guitar music, weaving it into their three albums (the fourth came out a few years ago). From the debut album, aside from the traditional extraction, one could discern a taste (later kept in check) for punk, eventually replaced by savvy college rock or reinforced pop-rock. Here the continuous roll of the drums from the début "Dusted" is finally free to unleash itself as it pleases.

There are tough tracks with great radio-friendly choruses like in the "Congratulations... I'm Sorry" album, more folk-rock pieces, or those reminiscent of R.E.M. as in "New Miserable Experience"; there's a semi-acoustic ballad which, if it weren't for Robin Wilson's vocals, all good intentions and sweat on the brow, would seem grunge...

Imagine the Van Halen were cowherds from Arizona: surely their melodic chart-topping metal would sound like "Stinking Up The Charts." The "light metal" continues in "Like It Or Not," all based on riffs, and becomes solid (but predictable) hard rock in "Useless": metal with Rickenbackers.

Just try taking "Useless," replacing its guitar sound, adding metal or hard passages/phrases in place of rockabilly ones, and finally replacing the "super arpeggio" with a real guitar solo as God intended: with these guys, it's always like this—if they go root, they use hard or punk guitars, and if they go hard or punk, they use root guitars.

In the end, I wouldn't say they're the best, but the most normal are the pop-college rock tracks, starting with the hit single "Quitter," laid-back and playful, continuing with "Circus Of Stars" and ending with "Tonight Won't Let Me Wander," a syrupy melody disguised as a rock song.

An interlocutory album, a valid side project. A little star more, despite the stylistic disharmonies and the lack of standout tracks, they would have deserved if they had just chosen to raise the wall of sound a bit and if they had changed hands.