It’s funny looking at the contemporary ratings for this album - they’re pretty much 5/5 or 10/10 across the board, except for Rolling Stone who gave it 2/5 stars. No wonder it got left off their greatest albums list. Spin Magazine even voted it album of the year in 1991 ahead of Nevermind, which most Millennials would consider heresy looking back.

I’ll be honest, I can’t tell the difference between power pop and alt pop and pop rock and whatever else people have used to describe this album. I thin it depends on who’s writing about it, or maybe on how many copies the album has sold. RateYourMusic calls it both Power pop and indie rock, which are total contradictions to me. Whatever, y’all. I don’t think I even care at this point.

There’s something wistfully 70’s buried in the sound just beneath the surface. My favorite songs were on the power pop end of things - they were infectuous. I kept thinking “this song is OK”, then by the end of the song mashing the like button and then repeating the process for the next. I can hear a lot of yet-to-come bands in this album - it almost plays like a greatest hits of the 90’s album from a dream where you don’t know any of the words but you know the songs are all super well known. There’s a sound here, a tone there, that reminds you of something else but is gone before you can place it.

Jams

“The Concept”
“What You Do To Me”
“Star Sign”
“Is This Music”

From the roundup Jamwise #38 - Best Albums of 1991, Pt. 2.