Saturation (studio album) by Urge Overkill

From buzzdainer 06/06/2021 17:04

Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman said of Saturation in 1993, "Urge Overkill, a band made up of some very smart boys acting dumb, had a[n] ambivalent year, cursed, you might say, by the granting of all their wishes. The band had a good record company enthused about promoting a good record, and good wishes and support from all quarters: both alterative and mainstream radio, the press, MTV, Nirvana, you name it. Yet for some reason, while the group's very smart record sold respectably, it never really clicked with buyers. Nor did its even smarter videos turn on the MTV kids. On balance, the band was either too smart about being dumb or too dumb about being smart." I think Wyman was on to something, and he seems to have offered a compelling explanation for why an album as consistently good as Saturation has widely been regarded as little more than a footnote in the annals of nineties rock. I think it's a grunge album that's both poppier and catchier than a lot of the other nineties grunge bands and more sophisticated than a lot of the bands that music fans perceived as edgier. "Sister Havana" and "Positive Bleeding" are two of the best straight-ahead rock songs of the decade.