Semisonic Album Recommendations: "Feeling Strangely Fine"

Album Recommendations: Feeling Strangely Fine

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that 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.

Semisonic

[#] Feeling Strangely Fine (1998)

If there's yacht rock, can we call this mortgage rock?

Reviewed March 10, 2025

I'm perfectly willing to go to bat for one hit wonders. It's not Semisonic's fault they get introduced to the world with such an obvious tune that we plebs decide we don't need to hear any more. That's what "Closing Time" is—such an ungodly obvious pop rock tune, the tidy guitar chords, the sentimentality about fatherhood, the ever-polite squeaky singer Dan Wilson who could only sound more Minnesotan if he wrote a song with the refrain "that's different", that it's the annoying punchline of 90s earworms behind "Wonderwall". However you feel about it, Feeling Strangely Fine offers a lot more musical maturity where that came from, though thankfully, "Closing Time" is more a quality floor than a ceiling.

Despite their nerdy pop instincts, Semisonic's shtick works best when they don't paint in unshaded pastels. There's major appeal in the minor key streetlamp aura Wurlitzers on "Secret Smile", "Never You Mind"'s barroom drama relationship angst, or the hushed hotel room sentimentality on "DND". Hell, "Singing in My Sleep" is a mixtape song about mixtape songs, and it's absolutely the best singalong here. Less fun is when they craft the adult contemporary equivalent of a K-hole on "Made to Last", drifting into highly agreeable, piano-driven midtempo mediocrity with one too many bloated verses that never satisfyingly boil over. I'd absolutely recommend Feeling Strangely Fine to pop rock fans, if only to find out how much sugar you like in your coffee.