Album: Thirteen
Year: 1993
. . .
The three major-label breakthrough follow-up albums that I was most looking forward to in 1993 were Nirvana’s In Utero, Matthew Sweet’s Altered Beast and Teenage Fanclub’s Thirteen, but the only one of which I well and truly ended up loving was In Utero. Another thing these albums all had in common was the production strategies were completely different from the previous records: Albini’s famous bare-bones style did Nirvana just fine, but I had definite issues with Richard Dashut’s jumbling everything together on Altered Beast after Fred Maher’s clean separation on Girlfriend, and don’t even get me started on Andy MacPherson’s production of Thirteen.
Whoops! Too late: I’ve already started. I didn’t mention this during the posts for Bandwagonesque, but one of the secrets of Bandwagonesque was Don Fleming’s production, in which each song hit you like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. (H/t Firesign Theatre.)
But every time I popped the CD of Thirteen into my CD player, it seemed like I was listening to the songs through a crack in the universe: there were there, they might even have been good, but I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of any of them. Not until the 10th song on the album, Raymond McGinley’s “Tears Are Cool,” the first of his great songs, and probably the best song on the album.
“Tears Are Cool” is mostly just McGinley and a couple of 12-string guitars — presumably Norman Blake is playing the other one — winding around each other, as his wounded, broken voice sings the first verse:
I wanna talk to you
Don’t want something I get for nothing
I wanna talk to you
I know when something isn’t worth discussing
At some, a shaker sneaks in, and maybe Gerald Love’s bass, but maybe not. Unlike the album heretofore, it’s remarkably uncluttered and incredibly direct. Just like the chorus.
You might say I know, but you always knew
I could be unkind, but I can’t be cruel
All my lies are false, but your heart is true
When I see you cry, I think tears are cool
I honestly don’t know if “when I see you cry, I think tears are cool” is incredibly romantic, or incredibly creepy. Or both. Things are often both. After the second chorus, both guitarists take interlocking solos, slipping in and around each other, but not really competing — you can see them looking at each other in the studio while they’re doing it, and it’s only after they’re done and McGinley sings the final chorus does drummer Brendan O’Hare actually pop in, playing a straight beat over that chorus.
I don’t say my prayers, but I pray for you
I might say who cares, but I know you do
You’re the one who knows that my lies aren’t true
When I see you cry, I think tears are cool
“Tears are Cool” this the first of several songs that nearly redeems Thirteen, except that most of those songs are actually part of the six(!) non-album b-sides Geffen stuck to the end of the CD because that was the fashion of the times. Or maybe they knew.
“Tears Are Cool”
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