Album Review: The Promise Ring - Nothing Feels Good (vinyl reissue)

Back in the early days of the blog, when I had more time to dedicate it and the world was bright and full of possibilities, I wrote a lot more nostalgia based thinkpieces about music/bands that I liked when I was younger. One of those was a brief history of The Promise Ring—what could be classified as an “emo” band hailing from Milwaukee, who enjoyed a late 90s run before imploding in the early 2000s just as the genre itself was taking off in the mainstream.

The group released four full-length albums before disbanding, three of which were on the independent emo/punk label, Jade Tree Records. Long out of print on vinyl, because it was such a niche format back in the mid-90s, the band’s first three records have now been reissued, arriving 19, 18, and 16 years (respectively) after their initial releases.

The most important of the three is the band’s sophomore album, 1997’s Nothing Feels Good, the album that ushered the band into a larger consciousness by getting video airplay on MTV’s “120 Minutes.” Nothing Feels Good also serves as a bit of an anchor for the Jade Tree reissue campaign, with the other two records—their scrappy, difficultly produced debut 30 Degrees Everywhere, and 1999’s peak pop Very Emergency—feeling a bit tacked on as an afterthought.

I didn’t really review Nothing Feels Good, per se, the first time around—I more just focused on my experience with the band’s two seminal albums, and the emo movement itself and how it played into my young life.

I never really knew that The Promise Ring were considered “emo” until way later—in 1999, before Very Emergency came out, I caught the video for “Why Did We Ever Meet?” and I sought out Nothing Feels Good. Back then, at 16, in rural Illinois, I just thought it was indie rock, or “college rock,” as it were. Emo was not a word I learned until I was in college, and met my first emo girl—and she was pretty much how you would have expected an “emo girl” to be in the year 2001.

Nothing Feels Good is not the kind of record that could be made today, nearly 20 years later. People rarely make ramshackle garage pop records like this in 2015, and if they do, it usually comes off sounding derivative or the era it so desperately tries to sound like it is from. So with that being said, listening to this reissue is the 90s—right down to the electric guitar’s crunch and the way the snare hit sounds when pummeled by a drum stick; not the slick, mainstream 90s, but the independent movement on labels like Jade Tree, and to some extent, things on Merge, Sub Pop, and Kill Rock Stars. Real jangly, sloppy, “indie” rock of its era.

But because Nothing Feels Good is such a product of its time, how well has it aged, and is it something that can be considered “timeless?” Well, for the most part, it’s aged pretty well—at times there are still some head scratchers, like “A Broken Tenor,” for example, and the similar driving rhythm of “Pink Chimneys,” though the former has always been less palatable than the latter.

Then there is singer and songwriter Davey von Bohlen’s affable lisp, as well as the pseudo-Christianity in some of the lyrics, most noticeable in the aptly titled “B is For Bethlehem.”

But it isn’t all bible study lessons—it’s also, at times, about being young, romantic, and confused—“How do I explain your body to the rest of my day,” he asks on “Make Me A Chevy;” then later, “I’ve got my hands on the one hand, and I don’t know where to put them,” on evocative title track.

I hesitate to say that Nothing Feels Good is a concept album, but it is certainly a self-contained set of songs that, by using repeating imagery and phrases, creates a larger, incredibly interesting picture—specifically the phrases “nothing feels good,” and “how nothing feels” are a stark contrast to just how sunny and up tempo this music can sound—conjuring a certain loneliness in the subject matter that is dressed up in something easily accessible.

How The Promise Ring got lumped with the “emo” set—I’ll never understand. It’s just power pop, folks. Sure, it’s emotional music, but it’s also indirect and ambiguous. It’s nowhere near as “heart on sleeve” emo as their peers The Get Up Kids were, or as obvious as later performers like Dashboard Confessional, or any of the Hot Topic-era bands.

I never answered my question from earlier—if this album is “timeless,” or not. I suppose in a sense it is. It’s a weird one—it stays firmly planted in the 90s, which is when I discovered it. I went through a bulk of my 20s not listening to it, but rediscovered it on my own accord in early 2011 when I was looking for music to play on the radio show I used to do every afternoon. So while I haven’t grown up listening to Nothing Feels Good, it has certainly had a huge impact on two very different portions of my life—making it a true timeless classic that I practically know by heart and can (mostly) enjoy from start to finish.

The album itself captures a real moment in time for the band—a sound that they quickly shifted away from with the slick production and straight-forward lyrics on Very Emergency. The urgency with which this record was recorded—you can feel the energy right out of the gate—is heard loud and clear in this reissue—it sounds great, pressed onto blue and orange marbled vinyl, giving the punchy arrangements a deep warmth. This is one of those albums that seems like it is just begging to be listened to on vinyl and now here is the opportunity.

Nothing Feels Good as well as the two other Jade Tree reissues, are out now.