Welcome to the Drama Club [Clean]

Performer: Everclear
Engineer: Gary Thompson; Dave Dysart; Dean Baskerville; Geoff Walcha; Lars Fox
Producer: A.P. Alexakis; Dean Baskerville; A.P. Alexakis
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Personnel: Art Alexakis (vocals, guitar); Josh Crawley (vocals, keyboards); Brett Snyder (vocals, drums, percussion); Anabella Alexakis, Risky Star, Amy Baskerville, Sam Hudson (vocals). Audio Mixers: A.P. Alexakis; Gary Thompson; Dave Dysart; Dean Baskerville. Liner Note Author: Art Alexakis. Recording information: Blackjack Studio, Portland, OR (2005); Kung Fu Bakery Recording (2005). Photographer: Nick Carulli. Following Everclear's 2004 split with Capitol Records, singer/guitarist Art Alexakis became the sole remaining member of the Portland, Oregon-based post-grunge act. However, rather than giving up the Everclear name, Alexakis assembled a new band, and soldiered on with '06's WELCOME TO THE DRAMA CLUB. Boasting a notably fuller sound, the expanded quintet offers up a lively set of pop-savvy rock, as best exemplified by the keyboard-heavy "Hater" and the melancholy, mid-tempo "Drama King," a pair of catchy tunes that position Alexakis as a legitimate rock-&-roll survivor. Art Alexakis always was, for all intents and purposes, Everclear, so the fact that he's the only remaining original member on the group's seventh album Welcome to the Drama Club doesn't really affect the sound of the band all that much: it's still the same melodic grunge that has defined the group since Sparkle and Fade. But where the Everclear on that 1995 debut was a lean power trio, the Everclear on Welcome to the Drama Club is a full-bodied quintet comprised entirely of pros -- and that includes Alexakis, too, who long ago left behind the taut rock & roll that made "Santa Monica" a post-grunge classic. Like the two-part Songs from an American Movie -- the ambitious fourth and fifth album song cycles that derailed Everclear's commercial momentum -- this album finds a rock songwriter with lots of pop ambitions, dressing this record up with multi-tracked harmonies, swirling psychedelia, clavinets borrowed form '70s funk, occasional banjoes, and oodles of organs, and he now has a faceless but crackerjack collection of pros to help execute his plan precisely. This makes Welcome to the Drama Club streamlined and crisp, and sometimes a little bit too orderly for its own good. It lacks both the gut-level attack of his best mid-'90s work and the endearing messiness of his turn-of-the-century concept albums, which means it's not as compelling as the albums made by the original trio, since it never feels as immediate or human as that group. But even if Alexakis' new Everclear feels a little fussy -- a little too fussy for his songs, which display ambition but are always at their best when kept to their simplest -- he still remains an intriguing ball of contradictions with a gift for a hook. He remains leaden with his humor -- the sanctimonious "Hater" might be the worst offender here, but it has stiff competition from the likes of the self-mythologizing "A Shameless Use of Charm" -- but his hooks are still heavy and melodic, which makes Welcome to the Drama Club easy to listen to, even if it is too tidy. At the very least, the album proves that Alexakis is not only a pro, but a survivor: stripped of all his old bandmates and his old label, he's carrying on with music that is a worthy, logical successor to his original music, even if it's not quite as forceful, immediate or memorable. [A 'clean' edition of the album also surfaced in 2006.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In the aftermath of the Nirvana-led grunge explosion of the early 1990s, Everclear's grunged-out roots rock brought it all back home without a trace of pretension. At first glance, songs like "Santa Monica" and "Everything to Everyone" are deceptively simple-sounding, grunge pop affairs. By the end of the '90s, however, people listened a little harder and began to realize that bandleader Art Alexakis was actually a major songwriter of his time.

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