There are albums that I’ve loved that I haven’t listened to in a long time. With so much music out there to listen to, it’s no surprise that older albums get pushed aside. And then you hear a song that renews that synaptic path in such a way that you end up on a mission to search up something you recall from a record buying session back in the mid-naughties.
The song you hear and album are linked by a voice. They’re not similar in genre, at all, but they share some sort of musical DNA that the singer imparts in tone and phrasing.More than a decade-and-a-half years apart and you can still spot it.
The song that renewed that pathway in my brain was an alt country song by The Dead Tongues called I’m A Cloud Now, which hooked me so hard I had whiplash on the first listen. You can view the video for it below.
The voice that jogged my memory belongs to Ryan Gustafson, and his previous band’s album I knew I’d played a lot. A quick head-in-a-cupboard search of old CDs and I’d located My Obsession, the debut full length album from Boxbomb. I think this had been gifted to me at the time, as I was working for a digital advertising agency that did a lot of work with record companies and one of their team passed it to me. Or perhaps I picked it up on one of my many forays down Berwick Street in London picking up promos. Whichever it was, judging by the state of the case it was played a lot.
Boxbomb had the same sort of spectral aspect to their work as Gustafson’s solo efforts 16 years on, but they were definitely – and defiantly – a kinda of late grunge rock band. My Obsession begins with Grey Sky, a song that is simple in its complexity, rather like Radiohead in their The Bends era, retaining a killer riff for the chorus that wakes up the listener and sets the scene. This is followed by the eponymous title track, which is something softer than you might expect that slowly builds through the vocal refrain before breaking into a harder guitar-driven riff. Reminiscent of bands like Headswim from the previous decade, with elements of Mother Love Bone thrown in for good measure. However, it’s Gustafson’s vocals that make this album an Unspun Hero.
Given the band’s initial EP, I think this debut album wrong-footed a lot of their fan base, being more introspective and relied less on the hard rock motifs that got them signed. It’s worth remembering that they were in their early 20s at the time of recording and you can almost hear their growth as the album progresses. They retain that rock-out-alt-rock-grunge vibe on tracks like Monotony but point towards a a bright future; however, it’s easy to hear why it was overlooked and, unfairly I think, lumped in with some of the dross of the era.
That voice, though. Especially on the run of songs from Good Boy through the alt country-tinged Let Go, Look Past and onwards into Get What You Pay For, which is probably the hardest emo-rock song of all. It needs the quiet piano of Worst Things to switch the tempo. These slower moments build into more momentous rock songs, but they are also the time where Gustafson’s voice really shines. Like VAST and others who were busy melding different rock genres together during this period, Boxbomb are not short of ideas and, in the main, execute all of them well.
Penultimate song, James Street, is something of an anomaly, being an acoustic ballad, the kind of song that gives you a breather at a live show. However, it plays out perfectly for the final song, Serotonin Sea – this is the song that sprung to mind when I heard I’m A Cloud Now by The Dead Tongues and the loop was closed. It the sonic juice that refuels you after you’ve had your emotions drained by what came before. And like all great final tracks, it makes you want to hear what comes next.
Listen to the album via the YouTube playlist someone has kindly set up, or on your preferred streaming service.