3 out of 5

Label: Vernon Yard

Producer: Matt Hyde

Some of us fondly remember the 90s as this time when the music ‘mainstream’ was glutted with acts that – while every one can’t be a winner – acts that took direct inspiration from bands that are generally respected, leading to a world of shoegaze, Brit pop and grunge that on the whole tread a fairly respectable line.  Yeah, eventually this would mutate into nu-metal, and like every renaissance it can’t be maintained for too long before turning into its own version of a corporate creation, but it was nice for a while feeling like you could turn on MTV or the radio and actually discover something you wouldn’t regret owning ten years later.  The argument could be made that there was a resurgence of this in the early 00s with cheapening technology and social media becoming more commonplace that put ownership somewhat more firmly in the hands of the artist, leading to a cyclical hype machine, but that’s just it – there’s no one winning style any more, and we’ve sort of developed our own rinse-and-repeat corporate culture to show off our playlists, even when its not all backed by massive studios.

This brief summary is horribly brief and probably horribly wrong, but my point wraps around to this: it was the mid 90s, and a lot of rock bands like Maids of Gravity were kicking around, messing with hazy ‘walls of sound’ and grunge riffage.  There’s nothing particularly notable about the band or this album.  Some songs have some truly catchy choruses (‘Moonspiders’), some of them stumble onto immediately head-noddable riffs (‘Only Dreaming’), and occasionally the album blossoms into its own groove of droney, moody rock that you can leave on repeat forever – look to ‘Windows’ for an ideal 4 minutes example – so sublimely combined are Ed Ruscha’s unobtrusive vocals, or the slow-burn guitars, or the production / mixing of Matt Hyde, which keeps the low end crisp and present but spreads the glitter of the resounding guitars atop.  The Allmusic review of this gets the references right: you’ll absolutely hear some Siamese Dream-era Pumpkins, and for sure you’ve got your Medicine in there, since Ruscha and eventually-Radar-Bros. Jim Putnam both came from that group.  But its also fair to completely brush the disc off.  There aren’t any knock-yer-socks-off lyrics or tracks, but there’s nothing to roll your eyes at or refer to as filler, either.  MoG feels like a legitimately written and recorded album, part of that 90s glut.  Yes, stack it up next to other time-of-the-glut acts and it gets lost, but held in comparison to the bands-of-the-second of this era, the album holds its own, and even manages to wheedle some damn memorable moments in that you’ll find yourself singing without realizing it.