photo by Meredith Goldberg; photo courtesy of Howlin’ Wuelf Media

Album Review of Smoking Popes: Lovely Stuff (Anxious and Angry)

Smoking Popes‘ Lovely Stuff is like a brand new blast from the past. The band, whose broadest mainstream success came in the ’90s, clearly hasn’t lost a step with this new release. For those (few) of you who’ve followed my writing from the early days, all the way back to when I launched my print publication, Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter, you’ll recall that I was based in East Lansing, Michigan. The rock bands in Midwest college towns like East Lansing had a trademark sound in the mid-’90s. The biggest band to emerge from the East Lansing scene was The Verve Pipe, but that scene had several equally talented bands that very easily could have equaled or exceeded The Verve Pipe’s success. It was almost shocking that a half-dozen bands didn’t emerge from that scene; East Lansing for a couple years there seemed like it might be the next Athens. But we were a little myopic in the East Lansing scene; in fact, that alt-rock/college rock sound with catchy hooks and a pop sensibility was thriving throughout the Midwest. One of the bands that emerged with a similar sound, though musically a bit more aggressive and punkier, at least around the edges, was Chicago’s Smoking Popes. So, you know, not a sibling of the East Lansing sound but maybe a first cousin.

In the 1990s, the Smoking Popes had modest success, with their sophomore album, 1994’s Born to Quit reaching 37 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart and that album’s top single “Need You Around” reaching 35 on the Billboard Heatseekers Songs chart in 1995, due in part to its inclusion on the Clueless soundtrack.

Lovely Stuff is the first Smoking Popes album in seven years, the band’s first release since 2018’s Into the Agony. Of course, I haven’t heard the band since the 1990s, so, as I mentioned in the review’s first sentence, this really does sound like a blast from the past. There’s not a lot of new music being made with this jangly, classic Midwestern college-town alt-rock sound these days. Still, it’s not too far off from modern alt-rock with a dash of pop-punk’s mainstream sensibilities. Still, the classic warmth and fullness atop the sometimes-frantic strumming is the mainstream appeal that many of today alt-rockers often miss.

The jangly guitars in disc-opener “Golden Moment,” as well as the tone of the vocals in the verses, are almost reminiscent of 1980s-era U2. But then the song jumps into uplifting, faster-paced alt-pop-rock mode when it reaches the chorus. It’s a nifty blend that makes “Golden Moment” a memorable song and a terrific choice for kicking off the disc.

I think the next track, “Fox River Dream,” might be the album’s most engaging, as the drum and guitar runs following the ends of the chorus are cool elements that unexpectedly push the song forward following the big harmony-driven chorus, something that would seem to call for a pause. That’s not just the only pop-friendly element in the song, as “Fox River Dream” is somehow noisy and raucous while, at the same time, being big and warm.

photo by Chris Tracy; photo courtesy of Howlin’ Wuelf Media

Where “Fox River Dream” may be the most engaging, I think “Never Gonna Break” might be my favorite song on the record. One of two, anyway. The verses start out steady, the beat picks up in the lead-up to the chorus, and then the chorus’ key-change makes it absolutely pop, as lead singer Josh Caterer’s voice delivers raw and tunefully cracking, as if he’s singing in anguish, “My heart is never really gonna break. It’s only gonna bleed a little while. I won’t be falling all the way apart. That’s not my style. You’re never going to have the satisfaction of knowing that you hurt me any more than I could take, ’cause my hear is never really gonna break.” Yeah, sure. It’s not entirely convincing, which is part of what makes it such a cool lyric. You can’t expect any better than this from a broken-heart rock song.

My other personal favorite is stylistically similar “Young and Dumb.” The sound is a bit more broad and open in the verses, and the guitars are steady. The post-chorus full-stop is well-executed. There’s a cool variety of complementary musical styles, with the broader more open sound that accompanies the verses standing in contrast to the more frantic, noisy, anarchic sound-filled backdrop that accompanies the main chorus phrase “always for someone else, never for us.” Tack on the rhythmic basswork and open space vocals repeating “oh to be young and dumb again” in what seems to be late song bridge but actually just bridges to the song’s close, and it’s a memorable song.

“Racine,” “To This Very Day,” “When the Sun Goes Down” – these are all also songs similar in style to most of the songs on the record, though each with their own variances (like the guitar squeal at the opening of “When the Sun Goes Down”) that are likely to make each of them other people’s personal faves. They’re great songs in their own right, but I’m gonna run out of descriptive phrases if I try to go track-by-track, so I won’t.

Tucked in near the middle of the album is “Madison,” the closest Smoking Popes come to pure, modern pop-punk on this record. The verses have a somewhat slower, more flowing tempo, but you may just find yourself pogoing to the song opening and the verses, so be sure to listen in a safe space… or a padded room, perhaps. There’s also some cool guitarwork in the song because you can’t be a rock band from the ’90s without giving your guitarist a chance to show off – fitting within the context of the song, natch – every now and then.

As the album nears its close, Smoking Popes shake things up. The penultimate track on Lovely Stuff, “You Will Always Have My Heart,” is a softly instrumented strummer, almost stylistically folk-rock, though you’d never mistake the rough rock ‘n roll edges of Caterer’s voice for those of a folk singer. As for the lyrics, if you learned only one thing from TV’s The Big Bang Theory, it should have been that “always” always makes it worse.

The band continues its detour from its types style on album-ender “Over the Rainbow.” Yes, it’s a raucous, noisy, distorted guitar rendition of the song Annie made famous. It’s crunchy, it’s rocking… it’s a surprisingly strong way to end an alt-rock record: “Why, oh why can’t I?!” That’s Lovely Stuff, indeed.