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EVERCLEAR
by Waleed Rashidi
For those who think Everclear's material all sounds the same, with the same pauses, the same "yeahs" in-between the same chord progressions with the same song structure,
well, they probably have a decent point. But the band has been hard at work in the past year to diffuse such claims with the release of two very different full-length albums (on Capitol), both bearing the same
surname, Songs From An American Movie.
Volume 1 (subtitled Learning How To Smile) is straight-ahead pop, with a lot more arrangement, and is largely based around vocalist/guitarist Art Alexakis' scrapped solo
project (he scrapped it in favor of making this an Everclear album, rather than a solo effort). This album spawned the singles "Wonderful" and "AM Radio", whose video in particular overlays the
faces of trio over famous '60's and '70's celebrities and popular TV characters, i.e. The Brady Brunch. Volume 2, by comparison, is significantly harder-edged (subtitle: Good Time For A Bad Attitude) and more
aggressive, and is a better indicator of what a live Everclear performance might entail.
With this sudden release of material, what's the band's plan in making sure all the necessary tunes are covered live?
Drummer Greg ("Buddy") Eklund explained that putting together an Everclear setlist is more systematic than simply drawing names out of a hat.
"With our new records, we have like 60 songs we can
choose from, "Eklund says. "We plan to have about three or four set lists and swap them around every night ... as it won't be the same thing in each city. We also want to play a lot of our older songs, off
of World of Noise and Sparkle and Fade. There's so many songs that kids really like that we never play live so we're going to try and mix it up."
Everclear's attempts to break away from the typical mold
of their now-signature sounding material include the tracks "Now That It's Over" and "Baby Talk." "Over" incorporates a very heavy Led Zeppelin influence, complete with the fat John
Bonham-esque drum sounds. Was this the band's actual intention?
"Yeah," Eklund explains, "we couldn't afford to use the [Led Zeppelin] drum samples -- no one can afford to use the sample -- so
basically what we did was try and duplicate the sounds, and someone had some book describing how they got the [Zeppelin] drum sound. I guess we aimed and hit the target, because everyone refers to it as 'that
Bonham song!'"
"Baby Talk" conjures memories of a cross between straight-ahead Metallica and slamming Red Hot Chili Peppers -- something one wouldn't expect from the typical bubble-gum pop
repertoire of Everclear.
"That song is kind of a weird song for us as it doesn't sound like anything we've ever done," Eklund says. "It's almost like -- in a weird way -- straight-up heavy
distorted funk or something. Everclear as a unit isn't a good funk band. As a matter of fact, I remember when Art started playing that guitar riff, I'd never ever heard him play guitar like that before, with the
weird funk chords. I was like, 'either you've been practicing, or you got some funk chords off of someone on the street, because this sounded pretty cool.'"
And for the rock band that's notorious
for cranking it up live and on record (particularly the aforementioned material), it's of interest to note that Everclear actually write most of their songs with their amps turned off, unplugged style.
"Most of the time, [Alexakis] will have -- if not the whole song done -- at least a good chunk of it down, so he'll play it for us on acoustic guitar and then we'll sort of jam it out," Eklund says.
"A lot of the time, we'll do it all acoustic. We sort of build it up from there."
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