Semisonic - All About Chemistry

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Free Music Notes for All About Chemistry

Free Music Review: Best Pop Since Crackle Snapped
Hit: 5 Stars

The transition between their first big record and this followup shouldn't have been easy--think skipping from Achtung Baby to All That You Can't Leave Behind--but the band makes it sound like they've had this under their collective hat all along. Dan Wilson (guitar and vocals), John Munson (bass) and Jake Slichter (drums) self-produced the album, and attentive fans will notice it right away from a Semisonic trademark--the multitude of eccentric effects (phones, modems and backwards guitar samples) plugged into "Chemistry," the lead single. There are overproduced moments here, and they make up the album's only noticeable fault, but they never obscure Wilson's seductive tenor. That's exactly the right way to run it, as it turns out, since while Wilson's lyrics continue to condense, his voice is only getting clearer and more hypnotic.

The band has stepped up from guitar- to piano-driven melodies, including the stunningly pretty "Act Naturally" and its prequel "One True Love," which Wilson co-penned with Carole King. There's harder variety here, too; "Sunshine & Chocolate" pays tribute to fellow Minneapolitan Prince, and if "Bed" is about as threatening as Semisonic gets anymore, it's still enough to get your hips twitching to Munson's ever-better bass licks. "Surprise" pre-empts the question of whether the band will ever hit "Closing Time" chart heights again, and "El Matador" is that hit's quieter refrain: an end-of-vacation song to balance the end-of-school tears everyone associated with "Every new beginning / comes from some other beginning's end." Perhaps the album's best song, though, is the bass-melodic lite ballad "Follow." Its simple hook and wistful vocals sound like everything that should have come out of 1987, only done right, and the song will stick in your head for days.

All About Chemistry could have been a swirling mix of Eighties melodies, Seventies guitar and Zeros production; instead, it's a neatly corked concoction that borrows from everywhere owes nothing to any particular decade. It is, in short, pop for the ages.

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