If you were in your late teens and lived near Chicago between 1996 and 1999, chances are, you were a Braid fan. Too young to have caught Smashing Pumpkins before they mutated into arena-rock dinosaurs, and too rambunctious to chin-stroke along with McEntire and O'Rourke, the angst-filled masses turned to Braid. You could count on the Champaign foursome to play through the area once every month or two, filling up the Metro or the Fireside Bowl with bobbing heads and squinty rock-out faces. Melodramatic lyrics, Fugazi-esque start/stops, time signature chaos, and an excellent balance of hardcore mentality and catchy melodicism-- what more could a Midwestern eighteen year-old ask for?

I know because I was there, pumping my fist to "First Day Back" with the rest of you. And that's why I can't decide whether I'm disappointed or just plain angry about the vanilla ice-cream blandness of Everynight Fire Works. See, Hey Mercedes is 75% of what once was Braid-- their answer to "Saved by the Bell: The College Years," if you will. When Braid broke up in early 2000, I took comfort in the fact that three-quarters of the band would continue on under a new moniker, without the services of guitarist/screamy-guy Chris Broach. Their first, self-titled EP was an unimpressive effort, but live shows featured a number of unrecorded songs with potential.

Then Hey Mercedes broke from Polyvinyl Records, the home of such respectable Midwesterners as AM/FM and Aloha, for Vagrant Records, the home of critically acclaimed artists like... hmmm... help me out here... Snapcase? Well, anyway, given Vagrant's habit of churning out slick pop-punk product for chain-wallet accessorisors that just came down off a bad Blink-182 bender, the warning flags were raised.

And indeed, these warning flags proved accurate upon the release of Everynight Fire Works. Under the increasingly commercial-minded guidance of J. Robbins, every rough edge is polished up to a shimmering, radio-friendly gleam. Close your eyes, and you can imagine most of these songs on MTV, maybe with the band in funny wigs and playing to a house full of underwear-clad teenagers.

Still, Robbins helmed the boards on Braid's final and finest full-length, Frame and Canvas, so the blame cannot rest solely with him. Frontman Bob Nanna seems determined to dumb down his songs to reach a wider audience, trading in the polyrhythms and unusual dynamics of old for power chords, power chords, power chords. Sure, there's a few stutter-steps in tracks like "A-List Actress" and "The Frowning of a Lifetime," but more common are songs like "Our Weekend Starts on Wednesday" and "What You're Up Against," which roll along with little variation in tempo or volume.

The one-dimensional nature of the album leads me to say words I never thought I'd utter: I miss Chris Broach. While his contributions to Braid albums often seemed limited to emphatically yelling "yeah!" every once in a while, Hey Mercedes is sorely lacking the hard vocal counterpoint Broach would play to Nanna's sensitive guy act. Also absent is the intricate instrumental interplay between Broach and Nanna, as guitarist Mark Dawursk adds little to indicate that Hey Mercedes even needs two six-strings.

Frustratingly, a couple songs still manage to strike direct hits on my old Braid-lovin' soul. "Every Turn" features the kind of acrobatically catchy vocal Nanna used to specialize in writing, with a great, crunchy chorus tailor-made for the at-home rockout. Album closer "Let's Go Blue" layers a tiny little riff over a chugging chord progression, and works well until resorting to that most tired of devices, the bass and drums breakdown.

81.8% of Everynight Fire Works, however, inspires nothing more than a yawn and bittersweet nostalgia. The mediocrity reaches its apex with "Quit," five minutes so lacking in hooks and creativity that it feels ten times as long, even before the textbook false-ending and buildup coda.

Of course, it's completely possible that I've just outgrown the target audience for Nanna & Co. Somewhere in Suburbia, I'm guessing there's a fifteen year-old kid just now discovering Hey Mercedes and thinking they're the greatest thing ever. More power to little Ricky-- he could be listening to a lot worse. And maybe my dissatisfaction means I'm actually disappointed and angry with myself, for outgrowing that rockin' inner teenager and becoming a crotchety old foge.

No, wait, that's not right. I'm disappointed and angry about Hey Mercedes' impossibly middling debut album. Sorry, don't know what got into me there.

-Rob Mitchum, February 7th, 2002