Review Summary: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here
Some albums just elicit a sentimental gut reaction in us, whether we had them in our youths or not. Perhaps certain works portray a particular season of the year, or perhaps the emotional pull of the music is simply so strong that there’s no way to ignore it. However, one of the most common reasons would seem to be that people remember music for the environment they were in while hearing it. I’m certainly no stranger to this myself: I’ll always remember
Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins for the time I truly hit rock bottom in my life and lived to tell the tale, and I’ll always remember Styx’s
Greatest Hits for the awesome trip my family and I took to San Francisco when I was a kid (that was the album we played the most in the car). But back in my hometown, one of the albums that hit me the most during my final months leading up to my current journey was the Semisonic classic
Feeling Strangely Fine. Power pop was already a style that could bring out sentimental and intense feelings - particularly with bands like Weezer and Third Eye Blind - but the phenomenal songwriting and ear for amazing melodies frontman Dan Wilson possesses would cement
Feeling Strangely Fine as a sleeper hit and hidden gem of the genre.
Now, to be fair: much like the aforementioned Third Eye Blind’s work, this isn’t just exclusively a power pop album. At its core, we’re listening to an alternative rock album with elements of power pop and post-grunge woven into the sound. What you get is some grunginess, catchy melodies, some fast tempos, and deeply emotive ballads all rolled up into one palpable experience. If there’s anything anybody truly remembers about this album, it’s the explosive opening power ballad “Closing Time,” which has steadily become a cult classic of late 90s alt-rock over the years. But the sad truth is that many people have never gone past this track and checked the rest of the record that follows. The truth is, it’s all as consistently impressive as that song. Immediately we get some variety with a much faster and more propulsive power pop number known as “Singing in My Sleep,” which sprinkles some peppy keyboard work over bright guitar chords in a sound that’s both playful and romantic. By this point, I should mention that bassist and drummer John Munson and Jacob Slichter (respectively) are just as important to this power trio as Dan Wilson is, as many of the tracks lend themselves to their precise and percussive grooves. “Completely Pleased” almost has a hip-hop-influenced rhythmic structure beneath its acoustic guitar exterior, and there’s a bit of funkiness in the finished product as well. There’s also “Secret Smile,” (the band’s biggest international hit, for the record) which has the bass smoothly gliding over the groovy drum track, creating a perfect beat for the vintage keyboard sound to glaze over. This is one trio that simply gels together impeccably.
Going deeper, you’ll find that the ballads tend to be the strongest songs on offer. In contrast to the faster and harder-edged pieces, they also benefit the most from stylistic variations and experimentation. “DND” has a beautiful string arrangement backing its acoustic guitar motifs, closer “Gone to the Movies” adds those same strings to an incredibly minimalistic guitar-based tune that benefits from its tragic intimacy, and the piano that populates “Made to Last” gives it a sound both personal and expansive in nature. The latter song also ends in a chilling climax in which a distorted guitar solo crashes with the loud nature of the main motif, which has crescendoed to a blast of pounding bass and drum work; truly a magnificent climax to a standout tune. We even get a hint of Jeff Buckley’s
Grace album in “She Spreads Her Wings,” which has elements of “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” and the quieter section of “So Real” in its style. The lyrics of the album tend to be remarkably sophisticated compared to other bands in the genre at the time; there’s the usual love-based fare once in a while, but a great chunk of the lyrical content seems intent on matching the sentimental and thoughtful aura it has. I can’t think of a better example than “Closing Time,” which Dan Wilson has given quite a heap of explanations about regarding its message. The track mostly centers around closing a chapter in one’s life to get to the next chapter, with all the joys and burdens the process carries. However, one of my favorite stanzas from this album comes from “This Will Be My Year,” in which Wilson seems to be singing about the passage of time and how each year slips away:
“Thursday's crush is a Friday night rush
And a Monday morning cry
It's the tail that you keep chasing
And it gets away every time”
Feeling Strangely Fine isn’t just an amazing album, but an amazing collection of musical snapshots. Every track has its own unique story, its own flavor, its own interesting take on Dan Wilson’s various experience and life stories. And when it’s all matched with such instrumental flair and such a passionate delivery, I can’t help but hold this album to the same regard as other power pop classics of its decade. I firmly believe
Feeling Strangely Fine belongs in the same echelon with Third Eye Blind’s debut and Jimmy Eat World’s
Futures as one of the supreme examples of this genre being written and performed masterfully, and it really deserves to be examined as more than just a footnote of the era it’s from. It’s sentimental, beautiful, nostalgic, and even gut-wrenching at times. Above all, however, it’s simply one-of-a-kind, much like the experiences and emotions I associated it with in my past. Some albums just have that power.
