25th anniversary review: Bracket – “Novelty Forever”

This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.

Fat Wreck Chords – 23 Sep 1997

The first “not Fat” Fat band finally got their first Fat LP.

Oh 1997.

I was in my second year living in Madison, WI, and moved into a flat on S. Bassett with my buddy Garen and two lovely ladies (no hanky panky, although one of those bright, successful young women brought along a cat, Zoya, who would regularly sneak into my room for cuddles). It was about a month into our residency that Bracket‘s 3rd (4th? We’ll get into that in a bit) studio LP Novelty Forever entered the household and enjoyed the next 11 months regularly playing on the CD deck.

Despite as much as I and, I think others of the same vintage, think of Bracket as a “Fat band”, this was actually their first full-length on the label. Without going too deep into details (although you can, by visiting this history I wrote of the band while I was at Punknews), they were on Caroline Records for their LPs, but swung it to be able to shop around 7″s and other (non-profitable, aka- not on CD at the time) releases to other labels. They were clearly a “not-melodic punk” band that was given a lot of leeway by a little known bassist named Fat Mike and, thankfully Fat Mike has somewhat of a good ear and made Bracket the first “not Fat” band on the roster ever.

Well, as we all know, Green Day is the punk band that got snatched up by a major label and actually made it big. So after recording three LPs for Caroline, two of which were actually released (924 Forestville St. [1994] and 4-Wheel Vibe [1995]) and one that was recorded but shelved (Like You Know [1996], of which many of the songs were released on 7″s and the like until the band was able to release the album as intended years later), the label went through management changes and band was let go. So where was a band with a good working side-gig relationship with one of the biggest indie labels of the day to do? You know what happens next.

Bracket is nothing if not creative and clever with their music. Marty and team have a knack for writing damn catchy music. After the incredibly fun and energetic but a noisy, production-wise, 4-Wheel Vibe, they landed in the hands of Motor City Studios and Ryan Greene at the top of his game or, at least, at the top of the “Fat sound” part of his career. Because of this, Novelty Forever is a much more solid sounding album than those previously released. 924 was too clean, lacking solid bass tones… 4-Wheel had a raw sound that didn’t complement the songs, despite how good they were. Novelty Forever just sounds good. But one of the biggest surprises was how serious it all was.

Given, Bracket was already itching to move away from simple themes and leaning towards more mature subject matter. Songs about the sweet release of death (“Last Day Sunday”), poisoning your teacher (“Don’t Tell Miss Fenley”), and the like were much headier material than the price of hot dogs or flying away in balloons. That’s not to say that Bracket hadn’t earned the right to sing about such serious subject material, we all grow older and gain new perspectives on life. But if one hadn’t been paying attention to the interim material from Like You Know that had been released piecemeal by smaller labels (and, if you weren’t a dedicated fan, you probably did miss it), this new Bracket, who had previously plumbed the depths of melancholy with a bit of cheek, was probably quite a shock.

If there are any faults with the album, they probably lie in the vocal production. Even with Bracket’s prevalence for vocal harmonies, on this they seem a bit too over-produced. There’s a bit of studio trickery going on that actually detracts from the vocals. And it is because of this that, maybe, the album suffers a bit, too?

Additionally, while each song on Novelty Forever can stand on its own against most comers the album, as a whole, doesn’t feel complete. It has a lot of great songs, but doesn’t seem to fit together as a single cohesive unit like some albums do.

Novelty Forever is, at the very least, a competent album. I definitely listened to it a shitload when it came out and, 25 years later, songs from it still feature regularly on my mix playlist (as does all Bracket music). It does have one of the better (if not best) Warren songs (“One More Hangover Day”), which is saying a lot. This isn’t to say by any means that any of the other songs are bad, but the overall tone of the album is of a moroseness above all and, at the end, the listener is left with a collection of good music, but not an album that stands as strongly as the sum of its parts.