1998 – Eve 6 – Self Titled

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I remember the holiday season of 1998 like it was yesterday. I was given a portable CD player, and a few albums. One of the albums I had asked for was Eve 6’s album, Eve 6. I remember listening to the major single from the album, Inside Out over and over. Little did I know, at the time, that the rest of the album would grow on me so much.

The album opens up with the track How Much Longer, which immediately gets you bobbing your head and tapping your toe with percussion. You’re pulled in to a fast paced album and you’re hooked. It’s followed up with the major single, Inside Out, then other tracks that I can’t get out of my mind to this day continue to follow up. Leech, includes lines about the kind of person who needs to lie to try to make themselves more interesting in social situations… “you’re suckin’ on my brain / you’re the teacher I’m the student / turnin’ things around, your story’s not congruent.” Something that holds as true now, as it did when I Was 14, is the fact that I’m still shocked to hear the word “congruent” in a lyric.

Maybe the song writer simply used a rhyming dictionary, but it really seemed like an intelligent form of rock that was hard to find. I was thrilled when I heard Open Road Song, just because it was a fun song that made you want to go fast – whether I was cranking it through headphones while roller blading at 14, or when I turned 16 and got my driver’s license. Still songs like Small Town Trap seemed like an anthem for my tiny hometown and people like me stuck in it as teenagers. And even as a child, I could tell that the song Tongue Tied was about someone tired of being smarter than their classmates, and just wanting to be one of the kids in class, just like everyone else: “Pardon me, sir, / could I ask you a favor? / Make me a cowboy / like my next door neighbor.”

Yes, Eve 6 was geek rock, in the vein of the Weezer music of the time. That is to say, a time before Weezer got an unusual amount of confidence in who they were, and forgot that they grew up in their garages playing Dungeons and Dragons and listening to KISS. But I digress. The self titled Eve 6 album is a rare gem I still find myself enjoying from time to time, and it is something you should listen to more than just the hit single from. Eve 6 wasn’t a one-hit-wonder in my memory, I really enjoyed their first major-label album all the way through.