Neglected Records In My Collection # 3 The Smithereens - Especially For You

 

The Smithereens were in many ways a throwback band who had a brief moment in the sun in 1986 with their debut album Especially For You, then returned to the shadows for the rest of their long and durable career which ended effectively when singer and songwriter Pat DiNizio died in 2017. All four original band members stayed together for pretty much the course of these decades. Many arms were raised  aloft and fist clenched in concert by audiences in the meantime I imagine.  

They hailed from Carteret, New Jersey and boy does it sound like it and boy do they look like it. Monochrome meat and potatoes. They look like a New Jersey band should look like. Bruised, indistinct, dressed generally in black, not oil paintings perhaps, but you suspect dependable, nice guys. They peddle nostalgia, every song harks back to The Sixties and generally deals with romance and how things often don't pan out as you hope they will. Nevertheless, this is pretty much a perfect record of its kind. Blue collar heartbreak, damned good songs, great lyrics and choruses.

Listening through to it now I realise I never appreciated what a damned good album it was in its entirity when I bought it when it came out when I was twenty and falling in love properly for the first time. There's not a dud on the whole record and only a couple of tracks dip below the very, very good mark.

At the time I sought out its obvious highpoints, Strangers When We Meet and particularly Begind The Wall of Sleep and Blood & Roses which hinted at genuine heartbreak. I barely noticed the track in between the two, In a Lonely Place which had Di Nizio duetting sweetly with a Suzanne Vega type, Vega, at the time the undisputed queen of Greenwich Village, who turns out to be, erm Suzanne Vega.

This is the only Smithereens album you need. I confess I haven't heard the rest. Di Nizio admits it himself though; 'This was like a Greatest Hits record from a band no-one had ever heard, because we'd had those songs for five years.' The record was produced by Don Dixon who'd made his name by handling the same duties with Mitch Easter on early R.E.M. records.  Especially For You was one of Kurt Cobain's favorite records. He was generally right about these things. I'm glad to have rediscovered it today. It's a better record than I remembered it to be.