EVERCLEAR

Songs from an american movie Vol. 2: Good time for a bad attitude

There is definitely a little more to Everclear than just nice pop-punk and coloured hair. Art Alexakis, the main songwriter and mastermind behind everclear got over his heroin-addiction years ago and has already worked over this experience on their debut-album. And their debut was their best record, especially because it featured three hits in a row right at the beginning. But that is the past, so what about, today.

Their main problem is actually, that Alexakis can’t seem to get off his golden formula too much. Or maybe he just doesn’t dare to. Since the songs on this album tend to vary a lot in quality – there is the instantly rearding “When it all goes wrong again” and the rather childish and somewhat awkard “Babytalk” and the starightforward punksong “All fucked up” – there might be other reasons. Either he does them, because they work so well and he wants to further explore what he can do best. Or he does them, because they work so well and consumers / record company / audience / fans expect them. Doesn’t make too much of a difference it seems. Or he does them because “songs from an american movie part 1” didn’t work so well. Anyway, this is not the place to bemoan that audiences are conservative as hell and that artists gladly adhere to their dictatorship. We’ve had that.

The album is more varied than your usual punkpop-album would be. There is more than enough variation to not let the repetitions show too much. With a lot of tunes you will instantly start to snip your fingers or pop your head, but nothing too dramatic. Everclear work on the middlefield, which will gain them a bigger audience and lots of friendly faces. I know, extremity seems to be more attractive since the seventies (or even earlier) but as we all know, we also need those quiet moments to reflect on our extremities. That is where Everclear come in.

Everclear represent a part of Californian lifestyle, or even more specific Los Angeles-lifestyle that is more positive and realistic than, say gangstarap or hardcore-brutality. You could put them right next to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, if you want to. Not just because they also sing about parties on the beach, about girls and emotions, but because they seem to share a similar background and attitude. (with the bigger success on the side of RHCP, of course, but therefore Everclear never get so melodramatic.) Moreover, they have that stigma of survivors, even though they are still quite young. And now they rest. Even at the times they rock hard and do that steamy, sweaty punk-thing, they still seem relaxed. Maybe that is an insight that comes with age. Just like realising that the world is made up in dichotmies, in dialectic opposites and that it has to be that way. As soon as you have discovered that some things might never change and that others do change, but very slowly, so slow that you might not be able to recognize it, or maybe you have changed in the same direction so you see no change, and so on.

“Sometimes I feel like everything is fine / sometimes I feel like I’m out of control” sings Alexakis on “Slide”, a song which describes life as constant movement without individual possibilities to navigate because we don’t really know where we are going. These lyrics might mean one and the same moment in time, and it might hold true for any other moment as well. They don’t advocate insensibility or nihilism, far from it, but if life has given you something to experience, you might just better feel it with all your senses, so once you get old, you have something to think back about.