Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Better Than Ezra

[#] Deluxe (1993)

The sturdiest pair of jeans in your CD collection.

Reviewed March 30, 2024

Kevin Griffin figured it out. If you can write a song, you don't rough it out in your 90s rock band forever (unless millennial money says it's time for an anniversary tour), you write songs for other artists. That way, everyone from Taylor Swift (yes!) to the Barenaked Ladies sings your praises. That songwriting talent is on full display on Deluxe, his band Better Than Ezra's 1993 breakthrough record and the one that gave them that eternal festival favorite "Good". It's not got many surprises in store—rockers in "In the Blood" and "Summerhouse", sensitive ballads like "Porcelain", the classic 90s noise interlude in the formally-untitled "Ether"—but what it's got is highly sturdy tunes and a zingy, catchy immediacy that makes it super easy to listen to.

Deluxe is an imminently likable record, but what's interesting to me, and what doesn't get talked about much with it, is the jangly Southern twang that permeates the record. Like R.E.M., Better Than Ezra come from the South, and where Fables of the Reconstruction was R.E.M.'s take on Georgia customs and characters, Deluxe songs like "The Killer Inside", "Rosealia" (which drives the point home with a mariachi reprise in its coda), and "Coyote" ooze New Orleans drama from their pores. While that was the whole point of Fables, though, Deluxe keeps it to a coloration of the overall sound, making it more general and universal as a result. Hardly a complaint for what it is—Deluxe is a nice bit of summery 90s pop rock comfort food and much recommended if you think "Good" is good.