Nate Amos: We do tend to listen to different music, but rather than each picking something, we tried to think about what we’ve actually listened to together in person the most this year. We realized that there is a winner by miles and miles and miles: Everclear.
Rachel Brown: We’ve definitely listened to them in the past together — we used to live together, so we’ve definitely bumped some Everclear. But this year in particular, there were just so many occasions I remember coming over to Nate’s and us just winding up listening to entire albums by Everclear. We both love Everclear, but I think Nate might more than I do.
Nate: For whatever reason, when I was in middle school, they were my favorite active band, so it’s a nostalgic thing. I think we both may have had an Everclear year separately from each other, but for whatever reason, it just became what we listened to whenever we were hanging out with each other — not on purpose, but just looking back.
Rachel: Yeah, that was definitely the Water For Your Eyes soundtrack.
Nate: It’s maybe not a revival, but certainly a step up.
Rachel: A newfound love.
Nate: I think we’ve loved Everclear for a long time, and we’re just now coming to terms with it.
Rachel: And we’ve never loved Everclear together. I feel like we listen to Everclear enough that I found a typo on their Spotify. Songs From An American Movie is spelled “Songs Form An American Movie.”
Nate: I think my favorite is So Much For The Afterglow.
Rachel: That’s definitely another good one.
Nate: But I also like — what’s their most famous song?
Rachel: “Santa Monica.” We actually tried to do a cover of it.
Nate: Yeah, there’s a partially completed cover.
Rachel: I just really can’t sing it right. He’s got the weirdest vocal inflections.
Nate: Yeah, he’s kind of a hard person to replace the vocals of. Because they go so hard, and every song they do that thing where he screams “Yeah” — the bridge of every famous song of theirs has a “yeah” section. The dude was just writing really catchy songs.
Rachel: They’re just such easy songs to listen to. They’re fun, but they’re sad; there’s still an emotional depth to them. It’s just such a good time.
Nate: I think one of the things about Everclear, too, is that there’s something also inherently funny about them. Because it’s so incredibly earnest to the point where it doesn’t even seem self-aware. So something about it doesn’t beg to be taken seriously. There’s a certain rolling-your-eyes-at-everything quality that Everclear has that I think Rachel and I identify with.
They’re a really good representation of that kind of conceptual dissonance between really positive melodies and really despairing, self-deprecating lyrics. I think that’s a balance that we’re both aware of as songwriters, and Everclear is one of the best examples of that in popular music. Because a lot of their lyrics are miserable, but the songs are really catchy. I remember “Wonderful” playing in the grocery store, and my mom just being like, “What a negative song!”
Rachel: I feel like ‘90s indie rock is where we have overlapping, shared tastes. Otherwise, I just listen to a lot of… actually, Spotify told me that I have a real thing with “Small Room” — I don’t know what that is.
Nate: They told me my #5 genre was Small Room! I was like, Well, I don’t know what that is.
Rachel: Maybe Everclear is Small Room...
As told to Annie Fell.
