Hey Mercedes
Everynight Fire Works
[Vagrant; 2001]
Rating: 3.0
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