ALBUM RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Superdrag

[#] Regretfully Yours (1997)

Reviewed June 20, 2023

A highly appealing sugary wasting away.

Superdrag is power pop, emphasis on the pop. You get the sense the heaviness is just there to enhance the moodiness of the lyrics, and Superdrag are more concerned with writing very pretty songs with harmonized guitars, catchy vocal melodies, and surprisingly complex basslines than flooring you with how hard they rock. You might pick up on a slight punk influence, as slight as the Pixies influence (mostly in the squawking bent guitar leads). Long forgotten, too pop for the alt kids and too alt for the pop kids, it's a shame. What they do, they do phenomenally well.

If you know anything from Regretfully Yours, it's the "Just What I Needed" rewrite "Sucked Out", but that one's just the tip of the iceberg. You'll pick up on plenty of references to the struggles of an addictive personality--chain smoking ("Carried"), heavy drinking ("Destination Ursa Major"), masturbation ("Nothing Good is Real")--but it's not steeped in that angst, it makes you sing along to it. Don't listen to the rest of the retrospective coverage of this one; it might be glossier than their earlier efforts, but that's relative. It's a batch of quality songs with just the right amount of sauce, and they will all get stuck in your head. Suck it and see. His hand could use a break.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Destination Ursa Major", "Garmonbozia", "N.A. Kicker"	"Slot Machine/Phaser"	I guess "What If You Don't Fly" (but not really)

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