Song Of The Week: 9/26/10

Song: "Out Of My Depth"

Artist: Everclear

Album: "Songs From An American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time For A Bad Attitude"

Year: 2000



Everclear's "Out Of My Depth" is a song about being in over your head. You get a sense that the vocalist is quite overwhelmed by his situation and finds it very hard to get out from the dark cloud that seems to be following him throughout his everyday life. The song definitely exudes quite the negative vibe. Everclear formed as a band in Portland, OR back in 1992. Lead singer and main songwriter, Art Alexakis toiled around in a few bands, most notably Colorfinger before finally creating Everclear. The band's roots stem from a mix of punk and grunge but as they became more and more successful, their style tended to shift to straight-forward rock with definite pop sensibilities. The height of Everclear's popularity would take place between the years 1995 and 2000. This five year span saw the band release three successful albums that spawned hit singles such as "Santa Monica", "Father Of Mine", "Wonderful" and "Everything To Everyone". In 2000, the band released two albums just four months apart. The "Songs From An American Movie, Vol. 1" would prove to be the last major success for the band while "Vol. 2" wound up being nothing more than a bad marketing ploy. Promotion was still heavy for "Vol. 1" so when the second volume hit stores, it basically confused the buying public as none of the hit songs on the radio were found on "Vol. 2". The waining popularity started affecting the band internally as well. In 2003, longtime members, Craig Montoya and Greg Eklund decided to leave the band. In the ensuing years, Alexakis kept Everclear alive though the other band members were a revolving door. Even though Alexakis is the main creative force for the band, I believe they trully lost some of their spark and energy with the departures of Montoya and Eklund. Also, since their departure, new releases by Everclear have become more and more sporadic. Alexakis seems to spend more time playing solo acoustic shows and being a staunch Democratic activist. Currently, there was some news that Alexakis has reformed yet another version of Everclear and were said to be working on a new album which was slated to be released in August of 2010. August has come and gone however with no new material from the band.