Ursa Major - Third Eye Blind

So there's one thing I can say definitively about Ursa Major, Third Eye Blind's first CD of new material since 2003 (BTW, WTF?  what have you been DOING, dudes?): it's sure comfy.  If you could wear the summers between 1997 and 2001, this is what they would feel like... maybe not quite as warm and mellow as a Snuggie, but certainly as comfortable as worn out jeans and your favorite flannel shirt.  It's like this pair of khaki shorts from Abercrombie and Fitch that I got back in '97 or '98, when I was in high school: threadbare, crummy, and not suitable for wearing outside the house.  But yet I do, and I feel damn liberated walking through Target with strings hanging down to my knees, in shorts from a store that used to make OK clothes until they went all tiny tweeny on us - wearing them a little out of irony (Abercrombie and Fitch?  at 26?  in 2009? please.) and a little out of nostalgia.

That is what Ursa Major feels like.

I know basically nothing about music other than how to say, "I like this" or "I hate that" or "this sounds like that," so I don't particularly consider myself a music critic.  That said, Ursa Major sounds like vintage Third Eye Blind, with the same guitar sounds we all loved back at the end of the '90s and little development out of their original favorite chords.  Ursa Major isn't experimental by any stretch of the imagination; it isn't even a new direction for the band.  The tracks all sound vaguely familiar, mostly because we've heard bits and pieces of them before.  Jenkins is operating with all the same ingredients, but he's just mixing them around in different ways... Ursa Major, more than any other Third Eye Blind album preceding it, evokes its predecessors with every tracks.  You'll hear a little bit of Blue, more than a litle bit of Out of the Vein, and the faintest whiff of the debut album.

This musical familiarity isn't a bad thing (see above) because I've always liked Third Eye Blind's sound.  It's nice to know that you can buy a 3eb album and know exactly what you're getting.  However, if Third Eye Blind's hasn't really branched out or developed musically since Blue, neither have they developed lyrically.  I appreciated Jenkins' writing when I was a kid, but something has changed over the last twelve years: I've grown up.  And Jenkins, despite his increasingly pummeled appearence, hasn't.

Jenkins' lyrics work when they're honest... his writing may not contain much lyricism, but at his best he manages to evoke a raw brutality that contrasts well with the nearly-fluffy pop rock chords.  (Who can forget "Slow Motion," from Blue?)  In Ursa Major, he follows through with some great lines: "Where's my super secret stupid fucking pocket where I left my bungalow keys," (from "Summer Town") and "Sometimes a blowjob's not enough/Why can't you play/A little less rough" (from "Why Can't You Be").  Still, his little-kid petulance can veer into the precious, when he asks, in "Why Can't You Be," "Why can't you be like my water pick shower massager?"  I don't mind when singers like John Darnielle work in that medium (see "International Small Arms Traffic Blues" from Talahassee), but Darnielle's irony makes it work.  What makes Jenkins' lyrics like these flop is his god-awful earnestness.

This earnestness is at its worst when trying to philosophize or, tragically, politicize... Jenkins has the subtlety of a sixteen year old who's just discovered the world isn't all sunshine and flowers.  "About To Break," not a bad track, really, showcases some of the worst writing:  "For the social worker at the needle exchange/For the soft medicated and the hard deranged/For the lesbians at the bakery/Saying, 'Do you really hate me?'" 

Never before have I bought a Third Eye Blind album and actively hated a track, but I guess there's a first time for everything: "One in Ten" is really dreadful.  Take, for instance, this lyrical gem: "No chance I could be her boyfriend/I'm trying to flip butch girls again/We could see what life pretends/And why don't I still call a friend?"  Musically, it's inoffensive (aside from being resoundingly dull), but the tale about trying to flip a lesbian seems straight out of a college fratboy playbook.  Jenkins is in his forties, and this song made me want to tell him to grow up.

Ok, all that aside, Ursa Major is still pretty great.  After all, it's Third Eye Blind, right?  And when you've been a fan as long as I have, lyrical miscalculations and musical repetition isn't enough to keep you from enjoying an album.  Like all 3eb albums, it's great for riding in the car with the windows down... I think maybe I'll just skip Track 5.