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"White Men in Black Suits"
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Almost Heaven:
John Denver 1943-1997
Dawn Eden remembers the man whose music left no room for cynicism (10/14/97)

everclear "SO MUCH FOR THE AFTERGLOW"
[ -- C A P I T O L -- ]___________________

BY MARK ATHITAKIS

California is corroding down to nothing, and Art Alexakis, for one, is jumping for joy. Singer and guitarist for Everclear, one of the few punk-pop bands to survive the post-Nirvana alternative wipeout, Alexakis is in a long line of songwriters who have a love-hate relationship with the Golden State: from Jackson Browne to Jello Biafra to Mark Eitzel, he takes great pride in exposing the empty promises that wash up on its beaches like so many syringes. It's his way with a hook, though, that keeps his revulsion from being overbearing; he writes snappy, hit-bound guitar pop to temper his spite. But much like California itself, Everclear's third album, "So Much for the Afterglow," is hard to trust; the bubble gum's so mechanized and calculated that genuine emotions hardly creep through. Welcome to punk rock, Walt Disney style.

The opening title track hammers all of its West Coast ironies into one place, from a Beach Boys-esque a cappella intro to the hand claps and la-la-las that drown the choruses, complete with a false ending. And throughout, lost souls stagger around, struggling to make sense of their predicaments: the San Francisco topless dancer in "White Men in Black Suits"; the bargain-binned Hollywood pop failure in "One Hit Wonder"; the girl in the punky, hyperdriven "Amphetamine" who's "perfect in that fucked-up way that all the magazines seem to want to glorify these days." Alexakis' production job gives the album a whomping immediacy, but it also casts a chill on the proceedings. His vocals, compressed and double-tracked throughout, imply the anger his lyrics speak of, but they never truly evoke them. The sole exception is "Why I Don't Believe in God," an aching, banjo-tinged requiem for his mother that's soulful without being gimmicky.

The guitars are left to carry the weight of the album, which they do nicely if unadventurously, in keeping with career-making hits like "Santa Monica" or "Heroin Girl." Alexakis has his formula down cold, and "Father of Mine," "Sunflowers" and "Normal Like You" have that perky, uplifting pop savvy that he's admirably perfected. It's obvious that he wants so much more, to combine the heart of a singer-songwriter with the righteous rage of a punk, but to be both of those requires a level of passion that "Afterglow" simply can't muster, especially when it's forced to make meaning out of tired platitudes like "the Prozac doesn't do it for me anymore." Like so many others before him, Alexakis is a California dreamer, but he hasn't yet found a way to make his own California myth something meaningful. Instead of the warm sunshine it promises, "Afterglow" weakly offers a climate-controlled tanning booth.
SALON | Oct. 23, 1997