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.

Semisonic

[#] Feeling Strangely Fine (1998)

Re-reviewed December 22, 2025, originally reviewed March 10, 2025

Maybe it's okay to write mortgage rock.

I feel like I seriously underrated this one when I first covered it in March. I just found it so boring yet so sugary sweet, and maybe a touch too smart for its own good. Little did I realize how many of these songs would not only stick with me, but I'd seek out again as 2025 went on. When I played it as a whole under one of my streams in December, I could hardly find a song that hadn't majorly grown on me. It's twelve diamond-cut adult alternative tunes about aging, angst, and lust, fastidious pop rock from nerds okay with references to Sony and Star Trek in their singalongs, and an album that's especially going to reward those in the right spot in life to appreciate it.

Of course everyone knows "Closing Time", one of those searingly obvious tunes that someone had to write it at some point, but it's the stratospherically triumphant "Singing in My Sleep" that's the finest single on offer here. Feeling Strangely Fine splits its time between aiming for the back row like those, getting alternatively slinky ("Completely Pleased", though I still think Lit did the pun better) and sentimental ("DND") with their acoustic cuts, and slowing down and yearning out, swapping their guitar ballads for piano ballads in the process ("Made to Last", "Secret Smile"). The big pop numbers and cynicism might throw you off, but Semisonic have a way of beckoning you back.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Singing in My Sleep", "DND", "All Worked Out"	"This Will Be My Year"	"She Spreads Her Wings"

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