Gin Blossoms
Up & Crumbling [e.p.]

It's called fear of success. For a tennis player, it's when in the decisive set you're leading five games to two and end up losing seven to five. For an "underground" band, it's when you finally get the chance to release records with a major label, complete with widespread promotion, heavy rotations, video clips, etc., yet internal disputes, inspiration crises, drunkenness, and hospitalizations occur, while the trust of those who signed you gradually diminishes visibly.

Whatever happens, the Gin Blossoms thought in 1991, it's better to "seize the moment" and release the little they managed to complete amidst a thousand problems. At least, if they were fired, if they were about to dissolve, if one of them was destined shortly to end up in jail, an asylum, or underground, at least something good would have come out...

And before the success of "New Miserable Experience," this second self-produced work arrives, this time just an EP; of the five tracks present, only "Just South Of Nowhere" is found solely on this disc; two are tracks from the previous "Dusted" and two will be on the subsequent "New Miserable Experience."

The key track of the EP is, oddly, "Just South Of Nowhere," in my opinion the worst song: it represents, in its geometry and sounds, the full range of this band's influences in just over three minutes. There's the taste for catchy melodies with "further drops of tone" towards the most classic country; alt-rock and post-punk guitars interspersing pastoral-cantilenal textures that, rather than jingle jangle, seem like electric ukulele arpeggios; in addition, a lot of acoustic in the background... In short, all American guitar music up to that time, metal excluded, within root-rock, pop, and folk-like structures.

Straight from "Dusted," the excellent root candy "Angels Tonight" and the punkish and fast "Keli Richards": as you can hear, these two tracks are found, in the Gin Blossoms' range of sounds and styles, at opposite extremes. "Mrs. Rita," identical to the one that will be included in the "New Miserable Experience" album, is another emblematic track: a folk that always seems (especially in the special) to want to turn into real rock, but never "finds the courage" to do so. The remaining "Allison Road," here in a "too acoustic for a major record" version, the following year will have to undergo overly ingratiating, too radio-friendly arrangements.

This means, at least, that this band had one more year available to them, despite being almost aimless, drunk, incapable of managing emotions and changes. Maybe if the Gin Blossoms had disbanded then, in '91, if their projects and dreams had stalled like the boat in the desert on this stunning cover, perhaps they wouldn't have been overwhelmed by certain anxieties and by spotlights too difficult to handle with immediate mastery. Maybe their leader Doug Hopkins wouldn't have let himself go in that way with the beloved alcohol, and wouldn't have been expelled from "his" band — from the one that, with a few more records, if all went well, would have been "Doug Hopkins' band"...

Or, as many generally claim, music extends the lives of those who already are desperate, destined for an atrocious end. And without the Gin Blossoms, and that album for the major to make at all costs, Doug Hopkins' life would have ended well before 1993.