From Beyond The Back Burner Arizona

From Beyond The Back Burner

Gas Giants

Atomic Pop Records, 1999

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 06/19/2000

I don't think I've ever written a review with more sharply mixed feelings than this one. On one level, I wanted very much to love this album... and on another, I wanted very much to hate it. In the end, well - you'll see.

A little background: if I could choose one band from the bad old '90s that was gone way too soon, it would be Tempe, Arizona's Gin Blossoms. Powered by a juicy twin-guitar attack that blasted out one brilliant rock and roll hook after another, the Blossoms combined the Byrds' melodic genius and the Who's fiery energy with, oddly enough, REM's sense of melancholy. Their matter-of-fact melding of upbeat music with downbeat lyrics created a series of curiously infectious singles, including "Hey Jealousy" and "Follow You Down," that helped them sell five million copies of 1992's New Miserable Experience and its 1996 follow-up Congratulations I'm Sorry.

Naturally, their next move was to break up.

I have tried not to take this personally, even while continuing to follow the band members' post-Blossoms activities (and, frankly, hoping for a miracle). The Gas Giants feature Blossoms alumni Robin Wilson (lead vocals and a mean tambourine), Philip Rhodes (one of today's most under-appreciated rock drummers), and guitarist Dan Henzerling, who never recorded with the Blossoms but played drums in one early band lineup. Tempe pal G. Brian Scott played bass in the studio but left between this album's March-April '98 recording for ill-fated A&M Records and its eventual late '99 release on indie label Atomic Pop.