Blast from the Past: Everclear's Sparkle and Fade

The mid-90's were awash in Nirvana sound-a-likes and alternative bands that couldn't truly write music to save there lives. It was a scary time to be a teenage kid listening to all those crappy, one-hit wonders day after day, and sure enough more then a few of those tunes managed to seeped into my cerebellum. Everclear weren't one of those bands, well they became one of them but they didn't start out as one of them. I was hooked on Everclear the second I heard "Santa Monica", a song that is still just as catchy today as it was the first time I heard it, but obviously in that type of environment it would take more then one song to truly win my heart and Sparkle & Fade has so much more then that one big hit.

From the get go Sparkle & Fade is a deep, emotionally draining album. Art Alexakis poured his heart and soul into this album, from it's revealing lyrics to it's crunching guitar sound, his pain and his optimism shine through every minute of this album. Songs of addiction, of loves lost, of faded dreams, and bright outlooks are haunting for a minute, but they get twisted with Alexakis shimmering outlook on the future. And why wouldn't he be optimistic? He had just had a child, his band was signed to Capitol Records, and he was making music for a living, everything was looking up for Alexakis and Everclear.

Sparkle & Fade is startlingly different from other alternative albums of the era, albums that were loaded down under unbearable pain with little hope for the future. Somehow Everclear took all the pain of their upbringing and daily lives and created a positive message that things were getting better because they were working at them. It's uplifting to hear something like that from a musician, especially as a 14 or 15-year old kid who felt overwhelmed by the live they were living. It was refreshing to pop on Sparkle & Fade and hear someone who had had a far worse life looking forward to what tomorrow might just bring.

After Sparkle & Fade thrust Everclear into the American conscious the band followed it with So Much for the Afterglow and album that was full of sin-a-long hits, but was missing that feeling from the previous record. From there the band continued to record songs that were hand crafted for alternative radio, but they never rekindled the spirit that flows through Sparkle & Fade. It's a little sad to think of what Everclear became, just another one of those money hungry alternative bands, but for a little while they were real and solid musicians that had a positive spin on all the crap life feeds us.
Everclear - "Heroin Girl"
Everclear - "Santa Monica"
Everclear - "Summerland"
Everclear - "Strawberry"
Everclear - "My Sexual Life"