Old 97's
Fight Songs
Elektra Records
Release Date: April 26, 1999
Someone once equated my affection for Old 97s to a teeny-bopper crush. Who
am I to argue? No band has captured my imagination this much since the
first time I popped a Social Distortion tape into the cassette deck of my
parents' Ford Tempo. News of a new 97s disc was like hearing an old flame
had moved back to town.
So you can imagine my surprise when I came across an Old 97s fan site
written by a pair of real live teenage girls who really do
have a crush on Old 97s. "This is a page about the best band in the world,"
the site begins, courtesy of sisters Libby and Ellen -- perhaps the biggest
fans of any band, ever.
"The 97s played at small bars and made their living out of a tip jar,"
Libby and Ellen write in a long and perhaps libelous account of a rivalry
between Old 97s and alt.countryfolk Whiskeytown. "At the show they would
ask the crowd if they could crash at someone's house that night.
Whiskeytown was doing the same thing because they hadn't gotten their
stupid bus with the ridiculous sattelite dish on top. The 97s got so
popular because they were such nice house guests and never left the seat up
on the toilet. . . . Fans would PAY them to stay at their house."
Old 97s seem to inspire this sort of ferocious loyalty among their
followers, myself included. So it was with all the trepidation of a first
kiss that I opened their latest, Fight Songs.
The word among music writers who have reviewed Fight Songs more
promptly than I is that this is Old 97s' purest pop album. It does have a
more open, breezy feel than the staccato rhythms of past efforts. But
thankfully for fans, it manages to avoid the slick sheen that ruins most
pop breakthroughs. The best of the pure-pop numbers -- "Indefinitely,"
"Murder (Or A Heart Attack)," "Nineteen" -- swing with the ease of a June
afternoon. Drummer Philip Peeples lends even the darker numbers ("Jagged"
and "What We Talk About") a pop-song spark with his agile rhythms.
Some of the tracks might not rise above the level of nice -- if not
especially interesting -- pop songs if it weren't for Rhett Miller's gifted
vocals and the band's lyrics, which stand head-and-shoulders among almost
anything in music today. (Who else could make "And your graduation date was
in absentia today" flow?) Miller, like Paul Westerberg before him, is one
of the few rock singers capable of distilling boys-will-be-boys bravado
with a fragile, disarming honesty.
What Fight Songs lacks isn't good songwriting, or honest emotion, or
straightforward production. It just doesn't seem to have the same giddy
enthusiasm that energized past 97s greats like "Barrier Reef" or "Four Leaf
Clover." And Fight Songs certainly doesn't sound as Texan as Too
Far to Care or Wreck Your Life. The pop hooks always seem to
have come naturally to Old 97s. I would have liked to see them delve deeper
into their Texas roots and still appeal to folks don't see themselves as
fans of country sounds. But the world needs good pop records, too, records
that are easy to listen to and enjoy.
People change a bit, I guess, when you haven't heard from them in a while.
That's enough to upend a teenage crush forever. I couldn't help but notice
there were no references to Fight Songs on Libby and Ellen's web
site. I hope they didn't give up on the best band in the world.
-- Chris Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com
