Published on Oct 3, 2002
The great bands are all about synergy. The Beatles, the Stones,
Fleetwood Mac… the list goes on and on, but the equation is
similar each time — the whole is greater than the sum of the
parts. McCartney, Jagger, Buckingham — these are great musicians
and great songwriters, and every one of them fares better in the
context of their bandmates than alone.
The Gin Blossoms didn’t stay at the top nearly long enough to
make it into that class, but they’re a band that produced an
amazingly strong body of music in just a few years before breaking
up prematurely in 1997. In my mind, their reunion is some of the
best rock and roll news heard this year, regardless of worthy solo
efforts like Blossoms guitarist Jesse Valenzuela’s recent
Tunes Young People Will Enjoy.
Valenzuela was actually the Blossoms’ lead vocalist in one early
incarnation of the band, and his harmony vocals are one of the key
building blocks of the band’s full, guitar-driven sound. He’s also
one of the band’s principal songwriters, along with lead vocalist
Robin Wilson. So the potential is there for this to be a great
album — and yet, I can’t help thinking of Lindsey Buckingham’s
solo albums while listening to it. Good songs, excellent
musicianship… and a nagging, near-constant sensation of
something missing.
Valenzuela’s voice has a pleasantly smoky edge to it, and his
sense of melody is terrific. On ballads like the melancholy
“Damaged Goods” and the country-rock croon “Broken-Hearted Kind”
(written with longtime Eagles collaborator J.D. Souther), he wraps
his gently lilting voice around the songs and gives them just the
tender shadings they need.
The problem comes quite literally in the crunch. Valenzuela can
write terrific, driving rock and roll numbers with fat, crunchy
guitars — a Blossoms specialty — he just doesn’t quite have the
vocal wattage required to sing lead on them. You almost inevitably
start speculating on what tracks like the ringing opener “Spark”
and the thumping “Can’t Go Down” would sound like done by the
Blossoms, with Valenzuela singing harmony behind Wilson. (My guess:
terrific.)
Valenzuela’s is a voice better suited to mid-tempo numbers that
rely heavily on melody and phrasing, a genre on which he wisely
concentrates here. His vocals shine on well-constructed numbers
like the lounge-blues “Bulletproof Jacket” and the juicy,
Latin-inflected “Andale Pues,” even if it’s hard to imagine these
numbers finding a home on today’s rigidly categorized radio dial.
The title of this disc is a sarcastic – and also realistic — jibe
at the fact that these songs are generally mature and sophisticated
in a way just about guaranteed to prevent airplay.
They’re so sophisticated, in fact, that the album runs a little
dry in places. Take, for example, “Lucky Stars,” one the
aforementioned melodic mid-tempo numbers. Subtle, effective guitar
work and a soaring, catchy pop chorus frame a song about…
well, it’s hard to put your finger on it, because Valenzuela’s
lyric doesn’t give you enough to really tell. The only song on
which Valenzuela breaks through the emotional reserve and cuts
loose is the closing “Someone Else,” a four-minute rant aimed
squarely at the man in the mirror.
The album features a strong supporting cast including longtime
Valenzuela collaborator Darryl Icard on bass, session vet Gary
Mallaber on drums and guests including underground power-pop deity
Tommy Keene joining him on guitar. But this is Valenzuela’s show;
he calls all the shots, and as satisfying as that has to be for an
artist, the end result is sturdy, well-executed… and not all
that compelling.
Instead, this solidly-crafted album suggests that, like a lot of
other excellent songwriters in rock history, the most effective
vehicle for Valenzuela’s music is still the band he’s attempting to
stand clear of for a moment. The Fleetwood Mac analogy fits both
because Lindsey Buckingham and Jesse Valenzuela are major
songwriting talents, and because the Gin Blossoms’ history has more
than a little Fleetwood Mac-style uber-drama to it. But also —
more to the point — because, intriguing solo efforts aside,
experience has proven that the band context is the one in which
this singer-songwriter’s music succeeds most often.