Surprisingly, given our cool, unaffected demeanor, we music fans are almost abusive list-makers. Best of the year, best of the decade, best shows we've seen, best bootleg we own, ten albums we'd take to the wondrous desert island-- we set in order the apparent chaos of our musical consumption with almost Germanic precision. Even more surprising than our secret obsession is its source, which I've concluded, after being bombarded by "Best of the 90's" lists from mags, rags, e-zines and friends, is harmless sentimentality. In reality, our annual exercise is not necessarily pursued out of a need to make sense of musical output, but more accurately, by a need to recapture, and perhaps even share, that fleeting first moment of love with an album.
Thus, in the glut of lists that the end of a decade brings, I've been arduously reveling in the past, remembering the musical climes of the times with friends and colleagues as I develop one of my own. Inevitably, the lists, top-heavy with early '90s releases, draw an ironic conclusion for rock fans. The decade that began heralded by such a beautiful din will apparently end in a whimper. Largely unable to cash the blank check written by the Pixies and later Nirvana, late 90's rockers sit at the head of a lost estate, viewing Ricky Martin videos like a broken promise.
Of course, we rock fans are a bipolar bunch. For every time we've erroneously mourned rock's untimely demise, we also too promiscuously hopped into bed with its false saviors. The latest in the strange lineage of these bedfellows is Verbena, an edgy trio whose Southern fried debut, Souls for Sale, caught the ears of more than a few desperate rock critics, along with head Foo Fighter Dave Grohl who produced the band's new major label debut, Into the Pink.
Alluding to a pedigree that makes rock critics drool, the outfit kicks off Pink with a Big Star-esque lullaby before settling into a more trampled path. The remainder of effort finds the band heading northwest from its southern rock debut to Grohl's vision of post-grunge, which sounds a heck of a lot like a second-rate Nirvana album. The album's title track is like Cobain warmed over, just as "Baby Got Shot" is even a smaller shadow of his former self than even Frank Black now casts.
It's true that Verbena are able to semi-favorably execute these pale imitations is an accomplishment in itself these days and might even signal a small ray of hope should the band decide to stake its own path in the decade that lies ahead. Until then, Verbena deserves no more credit for reviving rock than Kurt Cobain's shotgun should garner for killing it.
