Cassette Review // Second Best "Second Best"

https://secondbestpoptek.bandcamp.com/album/second-best //

Back in the days of AOL, I needed a new screen name and I always felt like there was someone better out there than me so I wanted to be "2nd Best", to look like 2nd Place but AOL wouldn't allow your screen name to start with a number so I thought "xXx2ndBest" looked cool so I took that.   One of my straight edge friends then wanted to know why I had the put the X's there and eventually that name went away because I was tired of people thinking I was something I was not.

While Second Best has a good indie rock sound, there are these elements of Beck which then make me think of this as being like something from the 1990's, from that time of grunge.    With a big, rocking slowdance anthem this can remind me of names like Buffalo Tom and Local H, even the Flaming Lips are in here at different times.  But it's just that symbol of the 1990's-- that rock sound that maybe you can't always describe but when you hear it, you know.

On the second side, the first song sounds a bit like Copeland, which is quite possibly the closest this comes to being modern in full but there is always this modern sense about it all even when I'm thinking it's out of that timeframe when Soul Asylum and The Replacements ruled with ripped jeans.    While I would completely agree if you told me this came from 1995, I also feel like it's much more fitting to be from 2018 because a genre such as "alternative rock" always needs these types of additions.