Remember your favorite Nineties alternative rock band?
I’ll give you a minute.
Got it? Was it Nirvana ― with their disposed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ― or maybe Hole? Maybe Weezer made the list, or perhaps the Smashing Pumpkins. There might be some Red Hot Chili Peppers single fixated in your mind at this exact moment.
Now put that band in the context of the present, and I’ll bet you my my entire music collection that there’s a mote of sadness floating around with that thought. Why this feeling? Because it’s hard to overlook the fact that many of our flannel-bearing bands have been dismembered ― Smashing Pumpkins, I’m looking at you ― disbanded, or have shifted their sound into a shadow of its' former self, thereby leaving the audience that bolstered the group in the beginning with a look of longing and wondering, "What happened?"
It’s a fine line to walk between staying true and staying contemporary, between the expectations of old fans and the demands of new ones. Among the Nineties rockers who have done this is with aplomb is Guster; the group that started as a coffee shop gig in a Massachusetts college town in 1991 and has grown into a group with an international following and a sound that seems to be pleasing everyone, as exemplified on their fifth album Easy Wonderful.
A far cry from the original simplicity of two guys strumming acoustics and a dude providing percussion, Easy Wonderful is an album of layer and depth, as the group works in different strata of sounds while still retaining that light, unbound style that comes effortlessly with acoustic instruments and is hard-won with hardware. Tracks like “This Could All Be Yours” brilliantly pairs a spritely acoustic guitar and foot-stomping percussion with mildly grinding electric guitars that adds a bit of a bite to the chorus, and “Bad Bad World” starts with a short-lived piano soliloquy before layers of snappy percussion, the occasional warbling steel guitar string and some dedicated acoustic movements are slathered on top, presenting an upbeat, bouncy song with a late Nineties flavor.
But not every track is an amalgamation of alt-rock beats and 2010 pop styling. The opener, “Architects and Engineers,” is blown more in the direction of Guster’s past, with tones that reflect Keep It Together or the Satellite EP. Further down the playlist, “Stay With Me Jesus” is a pretty stripped down track reminiscent of their earlier hits, with a good 85 per cent of it being nothing more than an acoustic guitar and singer Adam Gardner’s vocals which are occasionally lighted upon by what sounds like an organ, a jangling of cymbals and, you guessed it, more acoustic guitars. The final result is an airy, charmed single.
Those aforementioned bluegrass-meets-alternative songs are juxtaposed against tracks like “Do What You Want” and “This Is How It Feels To Have A Broken Heart” which take off with synthesizers and stay with them for the full stretch of the song. “Do What You Want” makes use of some heavy beats touched with lighter, evanescent sounds. It’s sweet, sugary fun with some decent lyricism at play, but make no mistake, it is all electronica save for Gardner’s singing which, sadly to say, doesn’t have the presence here that it does on some of the other tracks.
What is here, however, is a great expression of a group that hasn’t thrown away their base and reinvented themselves, nor have they clung helplessly to their original success without venturing into new creative endeavors. This is a band that has gone from freshmen co-eds playing for lattes to a band that is working on a program to make touring more eco-friendly. They haven’t changed, they’ve matured ― and it’s a maturity that speaks through their music to old and new fans alike.
Artist:
www.guster.com/
www.myspace.com/guster
Album:
Easy Wonderful is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
