Now-and-then music (4)

Then Music
Amazing Disgrace
By The Posies
released May 14, 1996
(DGC)

The Posies had always presented David Geffen with a marketing dilemma. They were yet another early-90s rock band spinning out of the music factory that was the Pacific Northwest, but unlike many contemporaries of that scene, The Posies were not grunge, nor were they the updated metal of, say, Alice in Chains or Soundgarden. During an era when the prettiness of pop music had been abandoned for a dour, self-conscious blitz of screeching guitars and primal wails, The Posies were unabashed in their pursuit of highly-polished power pop that, at its best, perfectly balanced an inheritance of late 20th century popular music as varied as punk, prog rock, and jangle pop, replete with soaring harmonies, quirky, well-spoken lyrics, and even hand claps and tambourines. They were also a nightmare to market given the prevailing commercial winds of the day and the oppressive pursuit of cool.

The Posies' departure from the 1990s zeitgeist was not one of attitude, but ambience. In retrospect, their music partakes of all the angst and bitterness that composed the emotive palette of the day, yet retains something of the older aesthetic that pop music should be pretty. This, of course, opens the band up to that age-old charge of lacking authenticity. Without restating the ancient raw-versus-cooked arguments, suffice it to say that The Posies fall most decidedly into the cooked category, and if that’s not your thing, you’ll likely want to pass on them.

More so than their commercial breakthrough disk—1993’s Frosting on the Beater—Amazing Disgrace attempted to bridge the band’s erudite pop that had won a small, loyal following with the harder-edged post-punk sound that had established itself via Nirvana. The result is an album of songs that tries to appeal to everyone, jumping from lushly arranged pop songs to spare punk rock. But even on the disk’s signature punk song, “Grant Hart,” the band seems to be holding back, paying homage to a Hüsker Dü influence it had already evolved beyond. The cumulative result is an album that never quite finds itself, but having said that, there are some really fine songs on Amazing Disgrace.

“Throwaway” begins with an acidic mix of guitar work that yields to light, sweet vocals winnowing through some verses exploring regret and misgivings in what is ultimately a fairly straightforward 4-minute pop song. “Song #1” starts with reverb before a lone guitar lays down the song’s basic melody, a Beatlesque sing-along with some interesting harmonies and key changes. “Will You Ever Ease Your Mind?” is a brilliantly paced and constructed song with touches of psychedelia and nods to early-seventies’ rock n’ roll, complete with tambourines and lushly layered harmonies. The other songs are mostly pleasant, if not very ambitious (or less well crafted).

You might ask what’s very ambitious about mining three-decades’ worth of pop music in the first place, but The Posies' great talent is not found in their desire to innovate or their search for novelty. They’re just a tight outfit that plays well-crafted songs—slick without being unctuous, thoughtful without being too self-regarding, capable of registering disappointments and loserdom without having a morbid fascination with the gutter. While not their strongest effort, Amazing Disgrace is well worth a few minutes scouring the discount bins.