Maybe It's Me

After two releases on the Sonic Unyon indie, Toronto quartet Treble Charger made their major-label debut with 1997's Maybe It's Me, a transitional album that ended up being their career high point. On the two indie EPs, guitarist Bill Priddle (later an adjunct member of Broken Social Scene who also leads post-rock outfit Don Vail) had been Treble Charger's primary leader, but on the much poppier Maybe It's Me, second guitarist Greig Nori challenges his primacy, writing and singing nearly half the songs including lead-off track and first single "Friend of Mine." Although on later albums Nori would pretty much take over the entire band, to the point of kicking out Priddle and refashioning Treble Charger into a Green Day-derivative mall punk band (and later mentoring lame faux punks Sum 41), the tension created by Priddle's Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine influences and Nori's poppier instincts works here. The effect on songs like Priddle's "Stupid Thing to Say" (which features a terrific, yearning chorus that provides the album its title) and Nori's "Kareen" is quite similar to Sloan's first two albums, where multiple songwriters meshed their influences into a unified band sound. Pop-punk legend Lou Giordano's production inches the band far closer to the alt-rock mainstream circa 1997, but despite the band's best efforts, Maybe It's Me was a commercial flop. However, it remains a fine, underappreciated example of where alternative rock was at in 1997, the point between the genre's post-Nevermind heyday and its eventual fall at the hands of the rap-rocking nu-metallers.