Days of the New | The Green Album/Days of the New IIEmpty Bottle Evenings

Sep142015September 14, 2015September 14, 2015No Commentby Bake

Days of the New | The Green Album/Days of the New II

Posted in Music

Today is guilty pleasure Monday and while I was tempted to review whatever noise Miley Cyrus just put out with the The Flaming Lips I decided to go back in time to 1999 instead. As many of you will remember this was a huge time for uncle rock bands like Creed and Nickelback who stole the vocal styling of grunge era bands like Alice in Chain and Stone Temple Pilots only made even more bland music. So bland that they were able to dominate Modern Rock AND Top 40 Radio at the same time. And we accepted this as music “With Arms Wide Open” because our society’s collective sense of what popular music is good is like a toddler’s sense of what objects belong in their mouth. Thankfully Nickelback wasn’t as effective as Legos as making us choke, but it was pretty damn close. Worst of all we just pretended it didn’t happen so we’ve let history repeat ourselves. One day 10 years from now a whole lot of people are going to be laughing and/or crying about the pop-country and EDM phases that they went through and never listen to any of it again.

But today I’m going back to the dark vault of the late ’90s to revisit the 2^nd album from a band (basically frontman Travis Meeks and whoever could stand him at the moment) known as Days of the New. There are differing stories about Meeks firing his band versus them quitting after their debut, but the decade of he said-he said, the reports of bombed reunion tours, and reports of drug and alcohol abuse don’t exactly paint Meeks as someone you would want to be in a band with one way or another. Regardless of the details, it seems after the first album (also self titled) Meeks decided he wanted to take full control. He enlisted a new group of studio performers for the standard rock band instruments, as well as an orchestra, a choir, and oddly enough, Nicole Scherzinger (before she became famous for singing with the Pussycat Dolls and Robin Scherbatsky) to be featured prominently on backing vocals. And they ended up with the best album from that genre.

I understand this a low bar to clear but the idea of a band likened to Three Doors Down including classical guitar codas and displaying influences of world music is pretty remarkable. There are still some cringe worthy moments but overall there is pretty solid production on this album blending Meeks acoustic guitar and Staley-Vedder-Weiland-esque vocals with more classical elements. And the voice behind “Don’t Cha”. Don’t cha wish every album in 1999 was like this?! Well not exactly, again it’s not perfect, but I can put the record on and appreciate real musicianship unlike other successful contemporaries like Limp Bizkit, Lit, and let’s just bash them one last time, Nickelback. No scratch that. They were Canadian and didn’t know any better. Let’s give the last fuck you to Creed. Even if Scott Stapp was a goddamn lunatic that’s no excuse for shoving your shitty music and shitty religious beliefs down our throat.