Note: I originally wrote this reflection in 2017, on the record’s 25th anniversary, and am repurposing it now as “New Miserable Experience” turns 31.
Thirty-one years ago, the Gin Blossoms were—to most people, at least—the new kids on an increasingly crowded alt-rock block.
To me, they were an immediate landmark, putting a place I loved—and the hopes of aspiring rockers like me and my friends—on the musical map.
Growing up in Arizona when Gin Blossoms released their breakout “New Miserable Experience,” your home-state rock heroes were few and far between.
The sort of national prominence the band enjoyed would be realized by predecessors like the Meat Puppets, briefly enjoyed by peers such as the Refreshments and the Pistoleros, and eclipsed by a younger act like Jimmy Eat World.
But for Arizona kids of a certain age, Gin Blossoms were the first to prove you could rise out of the metro Phoenix area and make a big noise. Seeing a band from a zip code you recognized on MTV, and hearing them on the radio, had a powerful, almost euphoric effect.
On its face, “New Miserable Experience” was the result of a winning formula. Gin Blossoms took the jangly guitars and ragged college-rock melodies of R.E.M. and The Replacements, then polished them until all the weird was wiped away and the catchiest parts shined through.
The album’s title seemed to confirm that notion and narrative, signifying a downcast, shoes scuffing sidewalks, Gen X take on established rock tropes.
But there was more to it than that. The record runs on a sort of combustion that’s rarely heard. Within its dozen tunes is an inherent push-and-pull between love and loss, tension and release, fraternity and fracture.
The record is haunted by the presence of former Blossom Doug Hopkins. Remembered as the architect of the band’s sound, Hopkins was kicked out of the group as “New Miserable Experience” rounded into shape when his drinking and personal demons grew louder than his music. Hopkins, tragically, would take his life by the end of 1993.
Even if Hopkins wasn’t present for the band’s first taste of success, his imprint is all over “New Miserable Experience.” Beyond the songs he wrote and parts he played, he whispers through the album like a ghost. He inhabits guitar tones; you hear the effects of his shadow in moments where frontman Robin Wilson’s voice trails off.
Corners of the rock universe have debated just how much credit Hopkins, and the Gin Blossoms left behind, should get for the band’s stardom. That conversation is better left to people who were there. But it’s clear that relationship, and other broken bonds, are at the heart of the record.
In “New Miserable Experience,” you hear a creeping darkness at the edge of a town known for its sunshine and dry heat. Wilson sings with sad eyes and the entire band sounds as if it’s grasping for a sort of optimism that’s in short supply.
The best songs on “New Miserable Experience” are the ones kept to time: “Hey Jealousy,” “Alison Road” and “Until I Fall Away.” But the record is full of marvelous, heartbreaking little moments:
This couplet on opener “Lost Horizons”: “She had nothing left to say / So she said she loved me / I stood there grateful for the lie.”
The echo used on Wilson’s voice on the second verse of “Until I Fall Away.”
Hopkins’ defeated definition of integrity, as delivered by Wilson on “Hey Jealousy”: “You can trust me not to think / And not to sleep around / If you don’t expect too much from me / You might not be let down.”
The way the band updated “Maggie May” with a fortune-teller and clever dose of early ‘90s pathos on “Mrs. Rita.”
“Pieces of the Night,” which contains a killer line about “Aphrodite on a bar stool.”
Perhaps the most pointed, poignant lyric on the record come via guitarist Jesse Valenzuela on coming-of-age cut “29”:
“Some rides don’t have much of a finish / That’s the ride I took / Through good and bad and straight through indifferent / Without a second look.”
When “New Miserable Experience” hit the atmosphere, at least to those of us living in the Grand Canyon State, it seemed the tables were turning our way. For a brief, exciting moment, we thought the next Seattle would come out of the Southwest.
It wasn’t to be. Gin Blossoms released one more hit record, then broke up for about five years. Other bands on the scene, ones with similar DNA, faded as quick as they came.
Elements of the Gin Blossoms sound went out of fashion, and what remained was bastardized by lesser bands. What got lost in the aftermath of the Gin Blossoms’ starburst, but is apparent 31 years later, is that the band had—and still possesses—a great deal of talent.
Wilson wasn’t an icon like Cobain, Vedder or even Weiland, but his supple, weathered tone makes him one of the best rock vocalists of his generation—and he remains in great voice after all these years.
Valenzuela’s guitar tone is, more often than not, flawless and equal to the moment. As a whole, the band latched onto a common vision and executed it with heart and skill. Few bands have been as consistent, whether the record-buying crowd showed up or not, in its sound and approach as this one.
Gin Blossoms gave us great songs that are markers of where music was, and where all of us were, in the early to mid-‘90s. They also gave a generation of Arizona kids something to take pride in, a reason to believe we could make it through our feelings and maybe find something bigger on the other side.