Review Summary: The world is ugly, but you’re so beautiful to me
What do you get when you combine the accessibility and structures of the Blue Album by Weezer and some of the dissonance and isolation of “The Lonesome Crowded West” by Modest Mouse? Well, you get the
Mood Enhancer E.P. by the forgotten 1990s band, Campfire Girls. The band’s only major label release during their initial existence, “
Mood Enhancer E.P.”, is a miniature portrait of 1990’s suburbia, condensed into one tiny E.P. While
Mood Enhancer is certainly not a direct combination of the two aforementioned albums, it combines their best qualities; the dissonance, accessibility and emotional weight; into a low-fidelity, low-complexity alt rock sound.
The personification of this face is the band’s vocalist/guitarist, Christian Stone is what gives
Mood Enhancer E.P. a small step above the rest; while by no means is he an excellent singer, he is able to embody [u]that[u] lonely, quiet teenager in the suburbs, talking about anxiety, girls and loneliness, and all of the negativity and disillusionment of angst. Stone’s soft-spoken demeanour makes him almost a little
precious; he’s one of those overemotional kids who has strong feelings and wants (“Motorola Cassanova”), but he feels perpetually trapped (“Homework”), is extremely socially awkward and lacking in physical ability; instead of standing up to bullies writes about his death wishes on them in his diary (“Junkman”). And, unable to face the music of reality, his diary is close to a surreal fantasy at points and seemingly spirals out of control; while they are a tad simplistic they don’t necessarily feel juvenile per se. There’s a few sprinkles of
deceptive self-deprecating humour (especially with the rather ironic title), such as in “Quick Phone Call”, where he says he’s “not having fun” to 911 when he’s about to go and kill himself, and his envy of wanting a car versus failing to hitch a ride on “Motorola Cassanova”; this simple yet effective wordplay helps develop additional character for the E.P. Backing Christian up is the music, which for a “grunge/alt rock”* record is rather quiet; there’s no “pounding” of your eardrums, just small little blips of guitars and drums that host enough power to make an impact but not to be moshed to, and what it lacks in force it makes up for in heavy swirls of dissonance and atmosphere; the punk-lite “Homework” and the tip-tip-tap of “Motorola Cassanova” make up an atmosphere of its own, and the EP’s best song, “Little Wolverine”, is a near six-minute swirl of dissonance and obscure (somewhat gothic) lyrics with an atmosphere comparable to walking through a forest during a storm. Most of the songs are hard to describe, for it is simply a complex mess of emotions you want to say but don’t know how to.
Unfortunately, whether the E.P. will hold your attention will be up to you as, ironically, an E.P. being about normal life is well… it’s
too normal for it’s own good, to the point it feels rather… mundane. This doesn’t mean the songs are bad; the only disappointing songs is “p.f.m.a.g.”, a drop-D acoustic number, which drags with no sense of direction compared to the other songs. And in an unfortunate collision/collusion of that mundaneness and plain-clothes production, Stone makes the unfortunate choice of using vocal distortion in the choruses on “Quick Phone Call” and “Junkman”; the feeling it generates is rather jarring and disconnecting from the whole experience, and harms the otherwise decent choruses when it is used. Furthermore, one can wish that the album’s mix was a little more forgiving to the vocals, which while relatively clear, don’t get enough of a push- maybe that’s the nuance of stage fright, but I would be definitely giving the band too much credit then. So to cap it all off…
Mood Enhancer E.P. is sometimes mundane (as is life), but for the most part holds up strong, albeit holding a slight sleep-inducing sense of inertia over the listener. It’s not amazing or astounding, but for what it is, it’s good, and somewhat more interesting than other alt-rock releases of that time, though doesn’t reach its potential due to some undercooked bits.
Now, there's nothing to do, you know, But drink away into the night.
3.4/5
P.S. If you have enough patience, you’ll find a hidden track after “Junkman”, which is a cover of The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”; it isn’t too bad of a cover.
* of its time
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Listen to the EP here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_F_PPGjkZm7QjnDIbzSGZqGPJQSMa-L
