Gin Blossoms – Mixed Realty Review

Posted in Reviews by - August 23, 2018
Gin Blossoms – Mixed Realty Review

It has been eight years since the Gin Blossoms’ last album, 2010’s No Chocolate Cake. The time has been spent touring, touring and more touring. As with most bands today there is no money to be made in making new music. This a reality that has stifled 95% of the “classic rock” bands output.  Touring and merchandise are the way musicians have to make their living which leaves precious little time for creating new songs. Luckily for fans of the Gin Blossoms some time recently was put aside to go into a recording studio to record Mixed Realty and what emerges is their best group of songs since their major label debut New Miserable Experience (NME).

The reality is Gin Blossoms will never create anything as good and cohesive as NME, the untimely death of Doug Hopkins in 1994 assured that.  The band still has put their best foot forward the few times they have come out with a new album.  In the past twenty-five years the band has only released five full-length albums and broke up for a period of seven years.  Since their reformation in 2003, three albums have followed and have not set the world on fire.  Each had some major highpoints, but both 2006’s Major Lodge Victory and No Chocolate Cake just seemed a little too glossy at times.

The first three albums were produced by John Hampton who has since passed away.  No Chocolate Cake was produced by the band along with The Rembrants (and frequent contributor) Danny Wilde. It appears that the decision to bring in outside producers Don Dixon and his partner Mitch Easter worked. The guitars are a little rawer, choruses a little louder and there’s a section that appears to have a trombone on it!

The album leads off with a great one – two punch of ‘Break’ and then ‘Face The Dark’.  The Robin Wilson song ‘Break’ kicks things off with the classic Gin Blossoms sound, a mid-tempo rocker that leads to the first guitar solo of the album.  This song is good enough to rank up there with those even on NME. Towards the end of the song, when Wilson starts singing ‘Close your eyes, hold me tight, Everything is gonna be alright’…you can’t help but smile.  Easily their best song in years.  That feeling continues on ‘Face The Dark’, another Robin Wilson song.  Yet again, mid-tempo-, guitar driven song but there is a flute in the background, that’s a first!

“New Mexico Trouble’ comes next and it’s a miss for me, but luckily it’s really the only one on the album. “Angels Fly” brings back the soaring vocals and more of an uptempo beat. “Here Again” and “Still Some Room In Heaven” feel like they would have fit in nicely on the band’s second album, 1995’s Congratulations I’m Sorry.

Most of the next few songs have you bopping your head around with the melodic choruses, but with the album reaching almost 54 minutes they probably could have dropped one or two.  Then you get to the odd 30 second “The JFK Shit Show”, which leads to Wilson’s apparent love or lust for “The Devil’s Daughter”.

A great aspect of the album is that everyone, minus the drummer, had a hand in the song writing.  Besides Wilson, guitarist Jesse Valenzuela, bassist Bill Leen and guitarist Scott Johnson all contribute songs.  The majority of the songs by Valenzuela are co-written by Danny Wilde again, and surprisingly (or not?) none of the songs by him are co-written with Robin Wilson.  I recently read an interview with Wilson who said that he felt Valenzuela was the best writer in the band.  After going over my favorite Gin Blossoms songs since NME, I may have to disagree.  Between “Break”, “Come On Down” (from Major Lodge Victory) and going back to “Competition Smile” from the second album, Wilson has written or cowritten my favorite Gin Blossoms songs. Not to diminish Valenzula’s contributions of course, in a recent interview he did lament the fact that the band voted down several slower tempo songs that he had written.

The album ends with Leen’s “Mega Pawn Shop” , which like the first song ‘Break’, has everything a great Gin Blossoms song should.  Multi-tempo, great chorus (“behind the Checks Cashed Here”!) and is the obligatory country tinged song that has made it on every Gin Blossoms album previously. It’s a perfect song to end the album.  In the Wilson interview he said that he knew “Break” should start the album and “Mega Pawn Shop” should finish it, but left the rest of the sequencing up to Don Dixon.

Having always been a fan of Wilson’s voice I’m happy to say that it sounds like it did twenty five years ago.  That’s the take-away from this album.  It’s worthy of being listed in the same sentence as New Miserable Experience. The band has been chasing that specter for years and has finally caught up to it.  If you liked the Gin Blossoms in the 90s, get this.

website:  http://www.ginblossoms.net

This post was written by

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *