This album was 10 years before its time. If it had come out in the early 00s it would fit in with the post-punk revival, garage rock, indie sound that was common then. Instead, it came out the same year as Nevermind, Ten, Badmotorfinger, Temple of the Dog. Every Boy Deserves Fudge, and Pretty on the Inside. I remember hearing it sometime around 1995, and it didn’t stick. I probably wanted something harder, faster, and more direct. But that’s the taste we often have when we’re young. Nuance is lost more often than not lost on us. I’m not saying Bandwagonesque is a masterpiece, and the lyrics are, for the most part, simplistic, but the sound is a slightly more refined sort of candy than I looked for then.

Here are some lyrics without context:

When everything you own is lost

And every friendship has its cost

Your rolling stone has gathered moss

And all your clouds cover the sun

And all your karma has undone

Remember you’re my number one

When I was a kid living in Oregon, summers meant being outside from 8am to well after dark. We’d ride our bikes from park to forest to Ashworth’s, where’d spend a $1 to fill up on a bag of penny candies to go with the fennel, blackberries, raspberries and apples we’d pick. One could live off high-fructose corn syrup and sugar for 12 hours a day from June to August. The music of our younger years often feels like that; an overdose of sickly sweetness that never grew up.