Fastball – All the Pain Money Can Buy (1998)

This is one of the most random albums I own. I basically have this album only because I really liked Fastball's hit single The Way from this album. This album played quite a lot on MTV and on the radio back in the late 90's when started listening to more and more Britpop and American alternative rock and this song kind of fit that mood perfectly. When I had actually bought the CD I realised that The Way was really unique song for this band. The rest of the album is quite boring guitar pop music that doesn't really raise that many feelings in me. Now that I listen to this album years later I feel like this band was quite good in what they did, but their problem was lack of originality and ambition. Their music is, by no means, bad, but there's just not that much to grasp either and sometimes that is even worse than raising negative emotions.



When I hear the song The Way, I immediately think about other bands of that time, such as Weezer, Fool's Garden and Travis. The Way is definitely one of the classics from this era. It takes some time to realise that this band was actually just a one hit wonder and not many people will even remember which band was behind this song.

Because I've already mentioned that The Way was playing on MTV all the time, I obviously have to share the music video in this post. I remember thinking back in the day when I first heard this song that this must be a remake of some old song. Maybe it was because the beginning of the song has been recorded in a kind of retro way. Another surprising thing about this band to me was to find out that this band was actually from Texas. They had such a similar sound to Britpop bands at the time that I really thought this would also be another UK band. Of course back then I was a lot worse in picking up accents, especially from music.

There are some strong 60's pop music influences on this album as well. Some songs bring to mind some of the rockier Beatles songs. On the other hand, this album has some clear power pop songs that remind me more of early 90's power pop bands like The Posies and Gin Blossoms.

I haven't really listened to this album in years and I feel like I like it a bit more than I thought I would. I've discovered some 90's power pop groups only a lot later on and I've only later realised their strengths. I feel the same way about Fastball, even though, this band is actually a bit more commercial than I would like.

Listen to the album on Youtube.