I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SEMISONIC-Pleasure EP (1995).

The Pleasure EP is an even more alterna version of what we’d get on The Great Divide.  Divide duplicates some songs from this earlier EP, and you can see them all polished up on the full length.

“The Prize” which has a great squeaky solo on Divide is even more raw and noisy here.  And “Brand New Baby” which was dumped near the end of Divide shines here in its more raw version (again, not really raw, just a little raw).

“In the Veins” has some fuzzy guitars (which show the band’s origins) and a bit of a punk feel.  And “Wishing Well” is more or less a typical ballad except instead of piano or acoustic guitar the music is a distorted electric guitar.  It mixes things up a bit, and while it doesn’t really have the hooks that Semisonic would later develop, it’s got a wicked guitar solo.

“Star” is a nice ballad, but “Sculpture Garden” is a good rocker to (sort of) end the album.

I say sort of because the band included seven 20-second ditties at the end of the disc, which they call “Shuffle Stuff.”  So when you put the disc on shuffle, you’ll get all kinds of funny little bits.  It’s nothing special, but it’s fun.  Kind of like this EP.

[READ: November 9, 2011] “Miracle Polish”

I’ve enjoyed Millhauser’s stories in the past, and I enjoyed this one very much as well.  It was a little obvious (I mean with this set up only one thing can happen) right from the get go but I thought he did a good job in changing my expectations and pointing the story in a slightly different direction.  And even though it was a little predictable, it was still enjoyable.

There was something wonderfully old-fashioned about the story.  It opens with a man walking door-to-door selling bottles out of his satchel.  The narrator feels sorry for him and, although he immediately regrets inviting him in, he decides to buy whatever he is selling and be done with it.  The salesman, painfully slow and meticulous, talks about his “miracle polish” which you just wipe on a mirror and…  The narrator says he’ll take one. 

The salesman is a bit shocked by the brusqueness and tries to get him to buy more than one, but the narrator basically tells him not to push his luck. 

He takes the medicine bottle of Miracle Polish and puts it away, more or less forgetting about it.  A few days later, however, while checking himself in the mirror, he notices a smudge in the corner of the glass.  He grabs the polish and rubs it on the mirror.  The smudged area now looks super clear, so he rubs it on the whole mirror.  And he is blown away.

A sci-fi story would have any number of strange things happen: he sees a new world, he instantly becomes younger, he can see into the future…  but no, basically the mirror seems to make him and his clothes and everything else look a little bit better.  Not amazing–it doesn’t clear up his flaws or anything, he just looks…better.  Revitalized. 

When his sorta girlfriend comes over–she’s kind of dumpy–she notices things about herself in the mirror, too–she’s not as critical of herself as she normally is.  And when he sees her in the mirror, he sees, not a better her, but what he thinks of as the inner her–she’s not gorgeous, she just looks more alive.

So you see where this is going.  He starts rubbing it on mirrors everywhere and runs out and he needs to get the guy back and….  No.  Millhuaser goes in a different direction with this.   And it’s an interesting one, one which sustains the narrative very well.

I was really pleasantly surprised with the way the story went.   Of course, in the very end it has to go back to him hoping the salesman will come back–that’s unavoidable.  It’s just the way he got there that was so interesting.