Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experience [A&M]

Why you'll love it

This A&M LP comes with a printed insert carrying the original production credits. New Miserable Experience went quadruple platinum, and "Found Out About You" climbed to No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart.

This edition

• Printed insert with credits
• Original album artwork

About the album

Gin Blossoms took their name from a caption in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, under a photo of W.C. Fields, and spent the late 80s becoming a local favourite around Phoenix. A&M signed them, and in early 1992 they headed to Ardent Studios in Memphis with producer John Hampton to make their first major-label album. They had already made Dusted on their own in 1989 and put out the Up and Crumbling EP while the album took shape.

Founding guitarist Doug Hopkins wrote the two songs that made them: "Hey Jealousy," which reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 4 on Mainstream Rock, and "Found Out About You," which matched it on the Hot 100 a year later. Robin Wilson's warm vocals and the band's chiming, jangly guitars carry "Until I Fall Away," "Allison Road" (recorded in Phoenix the year before) and "Mrs. Rita," and the whole record has the easy pull of a summer drive.

It stayed on radio for years and still sounds like the 90s in the best possible way. Try playing "Hey Jealousy" at a party without someone singing along; we've tried, and we've lost every time.

Also at Kops: more Gin Blossoms on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On A&M (cat# B-0026126-01), a reissue of the 1992 album.