Happy 20th Anniversary New Miserable Experience

Okay, so I'm a week late on this one, as it was released on August 4, 1992. In my defense, everybody else was late on it too; it took about a year to catch on, finally gaining momentum off the (very) slow building success of Hey Jealousy. It's a brilliantly written pop/rock song that almost didn't click with a grunge-crazed public. But, once it did, it was huge.

The sad back story that will always haunt this band, of course, is the suicide of Doug Hopkins, whose songwriting is the not-so-secret weapon on New Miserable Experience. Behind all of the sugary sweet pop riffs and jangling melodies were horror stories of alcoholism, unrequited love and crushed dreams. The truly sad irony is, his dismissal from the band due to his own alcoholism eventually led to him taking his own life just as the tortured stories he was integral to creating began to gain traction with the masses.

To most, Gin Blossoms are a mere footnote of a band; indeed, they never came close to matching the success of New Miserable Experience, finding only a couple of moderately successful radio hits for their follow-up Congratulations I'm Sorry in 1996. They disbanded the following year, but attempted the comeback to relevance in 2006 with Major Lodge Victory. The album did nothing, and this summer they're on the Summerland tour (with fellow 90's misfit toys Everclear, Lit, Marcy Playground and Sugar Ray) supporting their latest album, 2010's horribly titled No Chocolate Cake. It got them their highest chart position since 1996... at #73.

That they never matched the success of New Miserable Experience is hardly surprising; with Hopkins gone, the hazy fog of depression was pushed out in favour of sober reflections and more generic subject matter. The difference between everlasting pop and disposable pop is darkness; ask around a focus group of Beatles fans and see how many choose She Loves You over Yesterday. With New Miserable Experience, Gin Blossoms hit the perfect balance between the bright lights and the gutter. It took a while for folks to appreciate it the first time, and what they've done in the twenty years since have made it so it will probably never be appreciated again. But, if you listen to it front to back, you can hear an album that's held up remarkably well; New Miserable Experience in 2012 is an artifact, yes, but one that's been preserved in its darkness.

Is it up for discussion as a 90's classic? It's a laughable idea to most, but I say why not? Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You were massive hits that tend to overshadow the album's consistency. Allison Road, Mrs. Rita and Until I Fall Away were also singles and, while they lacked the chart-topping power of the first two, each one could have just as easily been the one that got the album noticed. There are great songs that weren't singles, too; lead-off track Lost Horizons sets the stage for Hopkins' demons and buries it under melody. Hands Are Tied, Hold Me Down, 29 and Pieces Of The Night easily best the band's future singles. Even when they get silly, such as on Cajun Song and Cheatin', it's more lovable silly than annoying silly.

New Miserable Experience may be an album drowned in depression, anxiety and fear, but it doesn't have a song on it whose melody is incapable of lifting you up. It's a masterwork in balancing light and darkness that may never be repeated; the closest to it in these terms is probably the debut album by fellow 90's forgotten sons Third Eye Blind. But, where Third Eye Blind got noticed on a niche track that featured rapping, Gin Blossoms rooted themselves not on the cutting edge of pop, but on the tried and true melodic blueprints of classic rock. That's probably why New Miserable Experience still sounds damn good today, and it will sound damn good in twenty more years, when virtually everyone has forgotten they even existed.