Album A Day: Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience

Artist: Gin Blossoms
Album: New Miserable Experience
Release Date: August 4, 1992

Another album that might come up as a potential answer if you held a gun to my head and demanded I listed my favorite album ever. Oddly enough, I only discovered this album about a year and a half ago, and wrote extensively about it once that happened. Simply put, New Miserable Experience is a great album. It’s the middle of the road pop rock that would eventually make folks like Matchbox 20 and The Goo Goo Dolls superstars, but there’s nothing disingenuous about it. New Miserable Experience isn’t playing it safe in the hopes of selling records here; remember, in 1992 Nirvana and Pearl Jam ruled the radio waves, and a band like the Gin Blossoms was a gamble. But it’s a gamble well placed, since the unrelenting catchiness of “Found Out About You” and the intelligent hook of “Hey Jealousy” are tiny gems of the ’90s. Even the lesser tracks on the album, the ones that lack the (modern) radio-ready catchiness of those singles, carry enough honesty and emotional commitment that they at worst pass muster and at best stand as should-have-been singles. Had I still been a devout member of the Church of the Compact Disc when I got New Miserable Experience, it certainly would have been one of the ones I burned a hole through as a result of overplaying, but suffice it to say that this record is a consistent go-to in my music library.

Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy [iTunes] (YSI)

==TJ==