Artist: Fastball
Album: All the Pain Money Can Buy
Label: Omnivore Recordings
Release Date: 11.09.18
There was an odd mix of good and bad luck for pop/rock artists who broke out in the mid-to-late ‘90s, as Fastball did. You could hardly miss these guys if you lived anywhere near a radio at the time. Yet soon enough, changes in the industry and digital technology left so many of them going from the charts to the $2 secondhand bins, seemingly overnight. If the intervening two decades have made its title even more of a cruel joke, All the Pain Money Can Buy has at least aged vastly better than many of its chart contemporaries. (Savage Garden, anyone? Smash Mouth? Anyone??)
The staying power is certainly helped by an impressive songwriting sophistication underlying that catchy veneer. “Out of My Head” and the slinky who-knew-it’d-be-a-hit “The Way” remain unimpeachable classics, though there are several more gems just as strong scattered around—the frontmen’s ear for melodies is just as irresistible on deeper cuts like the dreamy “Sweetwater, Texas” or the overlooked sunshine-pop masterpiece “Fire Escape.” If there’s a darker undercurrent too (as there is in so much of the best pop), it turns into a strength when blended with the hooks—the band was simply trying to write the most interesting songs they could, regardless of whether it would even see the harsh light of day in the end, and their real-life struggles and doubts only gave the results a deeper impact.
As with many reissues, the half-hour of bonus cuts is a mixed bag. We have a couple fun punkish B-sides, a few oddball covers and some bare-bones demos mainly of passing historical interest. The album itself wasn’t quite perfect either—a couple tracks could have used more fleshing out, and the grungy “Slow Drag” still sounds like an unconvincing attempt to be edgy—but it’s a listen that stays impressively fresh and fun today. Crank up in the car and sing along as unashamedly as you want, whether you’re revisiting those good old days or discovering these tunes for the first time.
—Geno Thackara
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