Capitol
2003
Slow Motion Daydream
About This Album
Aging was never going to be an easy task for Everclear. Led by Art Alexakis, a singer/songwriter who was just a little older than the rest of his post-grunge peers, perhaps inevitably led to his tackling subjects outside of the range of the Seven Mary Threes of the world; but that wasn't as much of a problem as the fact that his band was a career band in an era where the music industry and the audience generally ignored career bands. So, after their time in the sun in the mid- '90s, they earned the license to stretch -- resulting in the two-part album, Songs from an American Movie, in 2000 -- but they did it at a time when audiences were fickle, and they lost a big part of their fan base between the two records (Learning How to Smile debuted in the Top Ten that July; that November, its successor, Good Time for a Bad Attitude, peaked at a humiliating 66). The thing is, the band didn't get worse between those two records; if anything, they were more effective than ever in tying their hard rock and ambitious pop leanings together on Learning How to Smile, while Alexakis' songwriting remained sturdy and tuneful. In a different era, say 20 years earlier, they could have sustained a career as a good journeyman rock group, but stakes were higher in the post-alternative world and it was possible for the band to do good work without receiving any credit, while simultaneously stretching themselves too far in an attempt to get noticed thereby hurting the overall record.
Track List (try tracks 2,4 and 10)

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