rock

Gin Blossoms

1 festival played →

Tempe, Arizona jangle-pop veterans whose bright guitars carried unusually bleak lyrics — 'Hey Jealousy' still doing heavy lifting.

Gin Blossoms formed in Tempe, Arizona in 1987 around lead guitarist and songwriter Doug Hopkins, bassist Bill Leen and singer Jesse Valenzuela, with Robin Wilson later taking over lead vocals. The band's name comes from a photo caption in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon describing W.C. Fields' rosacea-spotted face.

Their sound leans on chiming, interlocking guitars and unfussy verse-chorus construction, closer to power pop and jangle pop than to the heavier grunge acts they shared airtime with. Their best-known material pairs that brightness with lyrics about regret, drinking and stalled lives, a contrast that gives songs like Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You their weight.

Hey Jealousy, written by Hopkins, reached the Top 25 and went gold, and their 1992 breakthrough New Miserable Experience eventually went quadruple platinum. Hopkins was fired by the label during the album's making amid worsening alcoholism and depression, and he died by suicide in December 1993, not long after the record's success took hold.

The follow-up, Congratulations I'm Sorry, went platinum in 1996 and produced the Grammy-nominated As Long as It Matters, alongside other hits including Til I Hear It from You and Follow You Down. The band broke up in 1997 and reunited in 2001, since releasing Major Lodge Victory, No Chocolate Cake and Mixed Reality, with a live show still built around close vocal harmony and clean, ringing guitar.

Read more

rock