Day After Day #318: Underwhelmed

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Underwhelmed (1992)

Discovering new music has changed a lot over the years. In the '70s when I first started listening to music, it was the radio. By the early '80s, it was all about video. MTV was such a game changer, even if it wasn't perfect. It took way too long to start playing videos by black artists other than Michael Jackson and it would play certain videos endlessly until people were sick of them. But MTV was able to give bands exposure that normally wouldn't get any.

By the late '80s and into the early '90s, my favorite show on MTV was 120 Minutes, which would air on Sunday nights and feature bands you wouldn't normally see during the rest of the week. Although some of those bands, like R.E.M. and Midnight Oil, would end up getting more mainstream airtime. 

One such Sunday night in early 1993, I saw the video for "Underwhelmed" by the band Sloan out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was an instant grabber, starting with a guitar drone before bassist Chris Murphy starts singing about a woman he's interested in.

"She was underwhelmed, if that's a word/I know it's not, 'cause I looked it up/That's one of those skills I learned in my school/I was overwhelmed, and I'm sure of that one/'Cause I learned it back in grade school/When I was young."

The band kicks in, featuring Patrick Pentland and Jay Ferguson on guitars and Andrew Scott on drums, and Murphy's smartass character continues.

"She said, 'You is funny'/I said, 'You are funny'/She said, 'Thank you'/And I said, 'Nevermind'/She rolled her eyes/Her beautiful eyes/The point is not the grammar/It's the feeling/That is certainly in my heart/But not in hers."

By this point, Sloan had been signed to DGC, which was clearly hoping for another Nirvana. Sloan was lumped into the emerging grunge scene, but they were more influenced by acts like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. But hey, why mess with a good gimmick?

"We were talkin' about people that eat meat/I felt like an ass 'cause I was one/She said it's okay, but I felt like/I just ate my young/She is obviously a person with a cause/I told her that I don't smoke or drink/She told me to loosen up on her way to the L.C./She skips her classes and gets good grades/I go to my classes rain or shine/She's passing her classes while I attend mine."

Murphy has said the song's lyrical approach was influenced by the Minutemen's "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing." A different version of the song had been released on the band's EP Peppermint, which was released in 1992 on Sloan's self-run label Murderecords. They re-recorded the song for their DGC debut Smeared, which came out in October '92 in Canada and in January 1993 in the U.S. 

"She told me a story about her life/I think it included something about me/I'm not sure of that, but I'm sure of one thing/Her spelling's atrocious/She told me to read between the lines/And tell her exactly what I got out of it/I told her affection had two Fs/Especially when you're dealing with me/I usually notice all the little things/One time I was proud of it, she said it's annoying/She cursed me up and down and rolled her Rs, her beautiful Rs."

"Underwhelmed" hit #25 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. For its follow-up album, 1994's Twice Removed, Sloan decided to buck the grunge trend and went with a quieter, Beatles-influenced power pop sound. The album was a masterpiece, but it pissed off the label; after the band refused to re-record the album, the label pulled promotional support. Sloan split up briefly in 1995 before reforming and asking to be let out of their DGC deal. They then began a run of excellent albums that has continued to this day, with 13 studio albums under their belt.

Sloan is decently successful in Canada, but never could get beyond cult success in the U.S. They've managed to forge a comfortable existence, playing clubs in the U.S. and theaters in Canada. The band has released four limited-edition box sets of their first four albums, the latest being for Smeared. For the first three box sets, the band has done full tours, but for Smeared, they just played two sold-out shows in Toronto this weekend. I was lucky enough to go to the second one last night; my daughter Lily already had a ticket and got me one when we decided to visit her. I've seen most of their Boston-area appearances over the last 28 years, but this was the first time I've seen them (or anyone) in Toronto. It was pretty goddamn great; they played Smeared front to back and then a bunch of B-sides and rarities from that era; the songs were louder and more raucous than their later albums, and they recreated it pretty flawlessly, albeit without the long hair and the slamming around the stage like 20somethings. Sloan hadn't played many of those songs in decades, so it was great to see them rip through them while also seeing my daughter get into them as well.