I'm supposed to be prepping for an interview, so I thought I'd share this song I absolutely love.
I have a lot of words about Hum, as I've been a fan for 25 years and this is their first album in 20, but I'll have to save that due to the aforementioned lame reason. Generally, though, this was my favorite release of the last year. It took me entirely by surprise, having found out about it about a month after its release.
This is a complex album with some really amazing moments, but this song is the first one that really grabbed me. I'm kind of beyond the point of telling if an album is "good" or not, but for Hum that's kind of irrelevant to me anyway. This song hit me like I'd unearthed a favorite song of mine from childhood. It's just so immediately familiar and personal. It literally feels like it was lifted from Hum in 1995.
Since moving to Seattle, I haven't really done the whole "Seattle music" scene. What can I say? I've been busy. I'm an adult person and a grad student - and going to shows is a pain in the ass in this city.
We've seen the "Sound Garden" and the "Black Hole Sun" and Kurt Cobain's house and childhood home, and we lived about a long block from Layne Staley's place of death, but I haven't really invested in exploring the actual music that Seattle was known for.
Now that I'm (hopefully) a year out from leaving Seattle, it's starting to creep up a bit. After this year, I'll have lived in Seattle longer than any other place I've ever lived. That's nuts, right? Only 6 years?
Jesus, where the hell am I even from?
The internet, clearly.
Anyway, in my thinking about Seattle music, I recalled the 'Home Alive' compilation from the mid-90s. The compilation (and self-defense organization) came about after the rape and murder of Mia Zapata, singer of the (awesome) band the Gits.
After rediscovering this comp, I listened to this song and was instantly taken back to 1995. I was 14, liked the catchier grunge songs and was on the verge of sinking deeply into a flannel-wrapped depression cocoon, only to emerge as a punk rock butterfly a year later. I listened to a lot of music like this - we all remember Soul Asylum, right?
Although I'd remembered this song really well, I'd never listened to more from the band. But now that I'm predicting future nostalgic feelings about Seattle, I need a soundtrack for them. What better way than by digging back into the kind of sounds that I loved when I was 14? Come to find out that this band was pretty solid. I mean, I get why they're not famous, but it certainly sounds like a bunch of mid-90s indie film soundtracks.
It's so solidly early 90s, capturing everything great about that era. I love it.
