I must have been 8 or 9 when this album came out. I only heard it because an older family friend showed me. It was the first album I ever heard that wasn’t filtered through my parents, and that a cool 13(-ish) year old girl was showing me only made me more fascinated with it. I felt like I was in on something, even if the record ended up going platinum six times over.
But the reason I can say it’s my favorite album is that it’s actually good. The songs are catchy and accessible, but not without depth. It has some of Stephan Jenkins trademark cringe (try listening to any other 3EB album and its everywhere), Kevin Cadogan was able to blunt his worst instincts.
Listening to it in recent years leaves me with a feeling of aneomia — a strange sort of nostalgia for the life I imagined a cool young adult living in 1997.
