Everybody has that one band that they were really into early in high school – they’re from your area, hyped locally but never made it big, despite being “so much better than all that mainstream stuff,” and most likely they broke up after a couple albums. And you’ve always hoped they would get back together, maybe catch lightning in a jar again.
For me, that band is Super Deluxe. They were briefly popular enough to have a couple songs (“She Came On” and “Famous”) from their first album played on The End (107.7 – the big alternative station back the heyday of Seattle-rock) in 1995. And, they had a great Christmas song (“All I wanted was a skateboard but all I got was this stupid sweater…”). This was right as I was getting into modern music (after a few years of thinking that everything worth listening to had already been made in the 60s), and I liked “She Came On” so much that after hearing it once or twice, I bought Famous the next time I was at a record store.
I was hoping it would be decent, but not expecting too much, and was shocked to discover that it quickly became one of my favorite albums. Power pop with the emphasis on power. But also with the emphasis on pop. Big hooks, jangly guitars, a little bit of the Seattle alternative edge, but also just a lot of Big Star. Smart lyrics and great tunes.
A few months later, a track recorded in their basement that was on the B-side of the “She Came On” single started getting some airplay. It quickly shot to the top of the request list on The End and was comfortably #1 on the People’s Choice countdown for something like a month and a half. The song was “Years Ago” and I firmly believe that if it had come out a decade later, it would have been snapped up by the OC or something and Super Deluxe would be a household name. Unfortunately, this was the mid-90s and they never really made it beyond being a Seattle phenomenon.
The released a second album, Via Satellite, which was every bit as good as the first. I tracked down a 45-only copy of one single. I listened to the local-music show on Saturday night for months with my hand poised, ready to hit record if the demo version of “Suicide Doll” came on. Plus, they were the first concert I ever went to on my own (the summer I was 15), and I saw them a couple more times at Bumbershoot. My first love in music has always been and will always be the Beatles, but for a while there, Super Deluxe was really giving them a run for their money. But then, as all things must pass, they broke up.
Every once in a while, I’d hear from a friend who lived in Seattle, or read in the Stranger, that Braden Blake (the lead singer) was playing a solo show, or had some art thing in Eastern Washington, or other rumors, but I had pretty much given up on ever getting any more Super Deluxe.
So I was amazed to discover last year that they had re-formed, had an EP and were coming out with an album. Plus, Braden Blake had recently released a solo album. Will wonders never cease?
Sadly, like many dreams realized, the reality is not as good as the imagination. Not to say the new stuff is bad, it isn’t. But it doesn’t have the same magic for me as their earlier work. It may be more about me, and where I’m at now, than it is about them. I’m just not ready to be wowed by them the same was I used to be.
So I’m happy to buy their new stuff, listen to it, and hopefully get a chance to see them live again. But it’s also a sort of metaphysical let-down. It all makes me wonder if maybe it was for the best that the Beatles never got back together. The Beatles were a once-in-a-millennium convergence of talent, music, social changes, magic, and mystery. If they had re-formed, I’m sure they would have made some great music, but I somehow doubt the forces would have aligned to make it anything like what it once had been.
All that aside, Super Deluxe continues to hold a very dear place in my heart. And they wrote some really fantastic songs.
The aforementioned song that hooked me on the band. With one of the all-time best openings, as Blake sings “She came on…” in silence and then the guitars kick in, all jangly and full of life, as he continues “…like a storm from the blind side of a memory.” Like I said above, in any decently run universe, it would have ended up on the newest Will Farrell movie or something and been a mega-hit. Sadly, it was instead on Kingpin (remember that film?) and quickly faded into obscurity. Really fantastic song, though. And it contains one of my favorite lines: “I found myself wandering aimlessly, calling it freedom.”
This is the song that, for a couple months, captivated the greater Seattle area my sophomore year in high school. It’s not hard to see why. It’s acoustic, stripped down to just Braden and the guitar, and is almost stunningly beautiful. (As an aside, I know I’ve been gushing a lot, and that will probably end once I stop reviewing songs that are among my absolute favorites. But for now, you’re going to get gushing). This is just a love song, but it’s about as good as a love song can be.
Also from their first album. A little more alt and a little less pop than “She Came On.” This song is darker, about the loss of innocence, the sense of displacement and loss of the modern zeitgeist. Imagine Nirvana at their poppiest and with a little less heroin.
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