4 keepers
keeper avg .286
It's surprising to me I never heard this album when it came out as at the time I had not totally given up on the radio. Though grunge was past its sell-by date "Stuck On You" briefly charted. I think I would have been all over the smarter-than-average writing, strong riffs, tales of young man angst, and adventurous textures. Admittedly there are obvious similarities to grunge bands of the era, specifically Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, at a time when Kurt Cobain was long gone and STP had moved far beyond their grunge-y origin; already that puts them in the class of second or even third generation genre copies. Maybe they didn't get any radio play in the local market and time I occupied.
Or maybe they fell into the limbo between my interest in grunge rock and my future passion for early-emo, which is funny as "Fantastic Planet," Failure's third album, seems to bridge that gap nicely. Sonically its influences are its contemporaries. "Saturday Saviour", "Leo", and the ripping "Pillowhead"**** sound similar to Nirvana, right down to Cobain's favorite Boss distortion pedal (similar to much of "In Utero", "Drain You", and "Stay Away" respectively). "Dirty Blue Balloons", "Pitiful", and "Sergeant Politeness" are the most STP-sounding tracks, including Dean DeLeo's guitar layering approach.
Fortunately, other elements seem to be part of a later movement, namely the beginning of the unfairly maligned emo. Lyrically it's just an album about girls (perhaps a concept album as I have seen it described), which singer/guitarist Ken Andrews approaches more directly than their more worldly and abstract predecessors. The opening riff of "Smoking Umbrellas"**** manages to be punchy and driving while interesting tonally. "Blank" starts as a delicate, earnest ballad that only goes askew late in the song with a stomping rhythm and aimless organ. The stately space-rock anthem "Stuck on You"**** is powerful and equally earnest. And sometimes the earnestness isn't such a good thing when the result is "The Nurse Who Loved Me" and the closing "Daylight," the emo power-ballads. There are a few other sonic avenues as well, including "Another Space Song," a kind of brit-pop shuffle with intriguingly resonating guitar riffs; the lengthy industrial/space hybrid "Heliotropic"; and a throwback to the Police on "Solaris."
While Andrews doesn't have quite the developed melodic sense of Cobain or Scott Weiland, Failure's sonic palate does extend beyond their past influences or proximal contemporaries. At a time when "alternative rock" was wallowing in late-grunge and nu-metal, in wait for a new movement, "Fantastic Planet" would have made an engaging and satisfying diversion.
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