Gin Blossoms
New Miserable Experience

THE REVIEW

David Pirner! David Pirner damn, the one who was sleeping with Ryder, the one from "Runaway Train"... Adam Duritz damn, the one from "Mr. Jones", who was Adam Duritz sleeping with?

And what about Doug Hopkins, what do you say about Doug Hopkins? Nothing, right? Perhaps many don't even know him. And after all, he killed himself in 1993, so...

His band was born in '87 in Arizona, they played roots and early R.E.M., Byrds-style music (which is almost the same thing) and non-chart rock, but you got that from the beat-up van on the cover. This album, from 1992, is the debut of his Gin Blossoms for a major label, after the self-produced "Dusted". Another one of those bands that only in the nineties, only after the big-haired indigestion of the previous decade, could reach the big public, even if not making it around the world.

The secret was in durability: bands like R.E.M. worked hard, made good records, but for the world charts (hence also American) they became known from "Out Of Time" onwards; in the same way, other minor bands held on until finding the breakthrough, the light, in those nineties. The Gin Blossoms and Doug Hopkins started off well since this second album could already boast a high-level distribution, but Hopkins was an out-of-control alcoholic, and every studio meeting was a "new miserable experience". He was kicked out, he, the songwriter, by the rest of the band, who would rely on the other formers nonetheless, by no means inexperienced, starting with the vocalist Robin Wilson. At that point, Doug's decision was tragic and perhaps inevitable...

"New Miserable Experience" is an album that is born wisely rock, traditional and radio-friendly. There are songs meant to end up on the right circuits, like the initial "Lost Horizons" and "Hey Jealousy" or the other big single "Found Out About You", all radio-friendly roots without acoustics, delightful to play through.

Entirely electrified folk roots with melodies that are all too recognizable and traditional, for songs like "Hold Me Down" or "Allison Road": the latter is the prime example when comparing the Blossoms to first-hand R.E.M. sounds.

They brush against grunge in certain guitar interventions in "Hands Are Tied" but you notice, root or not root, that these guys know how to play the alt-rock of the suburbs that we love so much. In fact, the solos have almost nothing to do with roots, and even in the rest of each track, there are bursts of guitars and drum throws that the purist of the genre might not appreciate, but which to misfits like me seem effective and help swallow a record that would otherwise have been too radio-friendly on one side, and traditionalist on the other.

The record has the demerit of slipping into an overly folky ending, but it is an excellent example of what and how much those years had to offer, and of how many beautiful things are played in the suburbs, far (even if success isn't that bad) from the limelight, aboard battered vans, among suicides that don't make the news.