Day 36: Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience

The Gin Blossoms' first and finest album New Miserable Experience is almost the perfect college rock record. It played in dorm rooms for most of the 90's, no doubt in the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning as kids came back from the bars and concerts, or maybe that part-time job at Sears, the one they took to buy books or make that car payment.

It just rings with what it's like to be young and un-tethered. The introspection, the loneliness, the exhaustion of trying to figure it all out while still studying and working and trying to make sense of that relationship that is just not working out at all.

I know I felt it in college. It might have been the consistent lack of sleep or the classes telling me to question everything, but I was in a pretty good existential funk for four years and song like "Found Out About You" with it's ringing lead guitar figure and pleading vocals hit me in the sweet spot of the soul. This album sounds best with the lights off and the headphones on.

"Hey Jealousy" was the big hit and it really captures the vibe of not having anything else to do but drive around your small town all night and let the "cops chase you around". Robin Wilson has the perfect rock and roll voice and it fits the chime of this album perfectly. The jangle is present on the Byrds-like "Until I Fall Away" and the R.E.M. is fully embraced on "Alison Road", which is my favorite Blossoms song.

The Gin Blossoms captured something in Experience that they never were able to come close to again. Perhaps it was because so much of the album was written by Doug Hopkins, who struggled with alcoholism and who's tunes leak with a beautiful pathos. Hopkins died shortly after Experience hit big and the band has never really recovered; sort of like what happened to R.E.M. after Bill the drummer left. The chemistry just wasn't there anymore.

This albums still sounds sweet to me today, though I'm happy to be in a much better place in my head now. The last semester of college was the best one. But listening back on this makes me what to go order a pizza at two a.m. and put on my headphones.

5 stars