Rarities Edition: New Miserable Experience

Like all the 2010 “Rarities Editions” being issued, this one contains most of the rarities found on the “Deluxe” version of the album. The original album is not included here. Instead, this is the alternate route – outtakes, b-sides, live tracks. Tempe, Arizona’s Gin Blossoms were initially viewed as a standard-issue jangle-pop band with country-rock tendencies and their treatment by the music business is yet another tale of mismatched priorities. The group’s main songwriter, Doug Hopkins, took his own life after being booted from the group over problems with alcohol and depression. His songs fueled the group, but it’s singer Robin Wilson who imbues these songs with a fragile emotional edge that transforms every performance into an essential listen. Whether plowing through live versions of their hit, “Hey Jealousy,” the Johnny Cash cover “Folsom Prison Blues” or the theme to the Jeffersons TV show (“Movin’ On Up”) or a studio run-through of Big Star’s “Back of a Car,” Wilson throws himself into each tune with a jarring sincerity. The Gin Blossoms were no instrumental slouches either, as the quick-stepping instrumental “Cold River Dick” brilliantly illustrates.