Dan Wilson received a hostile e-mail late last year. "It was from a fan in Minneapolis who was basically writing to tell me it's all over," says the hunky front man for Minnesota pop trio Semisonic. "The guy was like, 'Gone are the days when we could see you at the 400 Bar [a popular watering hole located in Minneapolis' Dinkytown] in front of 25 people.' I guess success is a funny trade-off."
Still, it's hard to begrudge Wilson his success after years spent slogging through the Midwestern winter slush playing gigs in search of a higher tax bracket. And it's not like the man's commissioning songs from hitmakers-for-hire like Diane Warren and Desmond Child. Rather, Wilson, bassist John Munson and drummer Jacob Slichter merely waited out the Zeitgeist until kids started paying attention once more to things like clever songcraft and crazy hooks.
Last summer, Semisonic had everyone in America singing along to Closing Time, a masterful exercise in wistful melancholia from second album Feeling Strangely Fine that had fans parsing the song's lyrics like post-structuralist scholars. What, everyone asked, was Wilson referring to exactly when he sang such lines as, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end?"
"I've had all kinds of responses to Closing Time," says Wilson. "One DJ in Australia told me that anybody who sings about women and beer is fine by him!"
In fact, Closing Time's extended "scenes from a bar" metaphor was written in honour of Wilson's baby girl Coco, now a year and a half old: "It's all about being born and coming into the world, seeing the bright lights, cutting the cord, opening up into something deeper and more universal."
Closing Time is a fine example of what Wilson does best, which is sketch out extreme emotional states in ebullient pop songs. Feeling Strangely Fine is loaded up with such songs, like Singing In My Sleep, in which the protagonist clings to his ex-lover's memory via a mix tape she once sent him, or Completely Pleased, a salacious ditty about sexual gratification. "There's an edge of regretfulness in a lot of what I do," says Wilson. "I'm just naturally drawn to that kind of music."
So were about a million other American fans, who pushed Feeling Strangely Fine into the Top 20 on Billboard's album chart last year. A far cry, indeed, from the band's brilliant 1996 debut Great Divide, which wasn't even brought into the UK (see MOJO 41). The same goes for Wilson and Munson's first band Trip Shakespeare, which fizzled out in 1992 after four terrific yet overlooked albums.
While Wilson has become an MTV heart-throb and a fair number of Semisonic websites have infiltrated the internet, it's not like the 33-year-old is gloating. "It's not like this is finally working for me," says Wilson. "There are a lot of other musicians who've had to suffer in a deeper way. Since 1990, I've been able to eke out a living without having to get another job, and for that I'm grateful."
by Marc Weingarten
NAME: Semisonic LINE-UP: Dan Wilson (vocals, guitars) John Munson (vocals, bass) Jacob Slichter (drums) RESIDENCE:Minneapolis, Minnesota PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE: As Trip Shakespeare 1989: Are You Shakesperienced? (LP) 1990: Across The Universe (LP) 1991: Lulu (LP) |
1992: Volt (all Twintone) As Semisonic 1995: Pleasure (EP) Elektra 1996: Great Divide (LP) MCA 1997: Feeling Strangely Fine (LP) MCA STRENGTHS: "Lyrics are an important part of what I do - I like them to have multiple meanings and unfinished threads." Dan Wilson REFERENCES: "I dig the way they combine catchy pop vocals with really aggressive rhythms. They're a really cool band." Ken Jordan, The Crystal Method |