Blessed Union of Souls

Genre: Cowpunk. Apparently cowpunk was a thing and it is responsible for "alternative" going from Nirvana to Train in less than a decade. Other notable cowpunk acts include Everclear. To be fair, it was more the slide of the "scene" onto the pop charts that morphed it into alternative country. Cowpunk also includes The Cramps and The Violent Femmes if you go by Wikipedia, and alternative country also includes Calexico, so once again I can't get away with a blanket condemnation of a genre. but fuck, man. This album just sounds like the part of 1995 that you neither actively hated nor ignored.

Where would I have heard of them: They got some serious mainstream success with the single "I Believe," off this album, and "Leonardo (She likes me for me)," the song that is not about Leonardo, New Jersey.

Anything of note: This is one of those bands. I thought they had done "Counting Blue Cars." Turns out that was Dishwalla. Dishwalla is famous as that band that did "Counting Blue Cars," not that band that made the music video with the girl with the bee. That was Blind Melon. So no. Absolutely nothing of note. this band is fucking boring. Their wikipedia page is just a list of albums. Not for lack of trying. someone tried to dig up interesting things. all they got is that a band member toured with Ozzy once.

Are they any good: Good is such a relative term. I often find myself in a store, listening to such of the modern top 40 that whatever corporate entity felt they could sanitize enough to make into an official corporate playlist. And it is horrible. It either sounds like kids bop or like something that was put together in an hour on fruity loops between interviews. It makes me miss stuff like this I grew up listening to stuff like Blessed Union of Souls. And boy did I hate it. Except for the odd single, this is meaningless garbage. There is some feel-good racial politics thrown in, but this is the most sanitary crap ever. On the other hand, this is recognizable as music. I don't mean that they played instruments, I mean that this has both rhythm AND melody, both, at the same time! there's even some pop hooks. In the pop music. That don't even make you want to die. Like somehow now? What passes for a hook is a noise that just gets your attention. Like we are so addled by ADD and the omnipresence of free music that anything that can make us pay attention to the background noise for more than five seconds counts as a success. But back then? a hook required an interesting lyric, or an unexpected melodic development, possibly both. Wow. they don't make uninteresting crap like this anymore. Like sure, this is boring. But it doesn't sound like it is trying to come out of the stereo to hurt me, while also being boring. So that is a plus. This is pretty pleasant, all told.

So there you go. If you take modern top 40 as your threshold, this is like fucking Bach. Otherwise it is boring as hell. I hope they got laid a lot for this but I bet they didn't. I bet they just had wheat-grass flavored yogurt and went to bed early.