Album Review: Self- Subliminal Plastic Motives (20th Anniversary Vinyl Reissue)

An album like Subliminal Plastic Motives could have only come out of the 90s.

I was rather late to (and subsequently did not stay long at) the party on the band simply named Self. I discovered them in 1999, after I had spent some of our AOL free trial hours combing the Internet for information about the band Failure, and any post-Failure related projects.

By this point, two years after Failure’s demise, the band’s former frontman Ken Andrews was already an in demand producer and engineer, and I learned that he had produced one song on Self’s 1999 release, Breakfast With Girls.

Just one song?

Well this was in the dark ages of the Internet, long before iTunes and .99 song purchases—so I happily plunked down my money for the full album, along with another Andrew’s produced affair—Blinker The Star’s amazing August Everywhere.

To this day, fifteen years later, I still fuck with August Everywhere, but even at the age of sixteen, after listening to Breakfast With Girls, something was preventing me from enjoying it. Jangly, indie power pop at its finest, I would stop short of saying Self are an acquired taste, but I would also say that they are not widely accessible to all listeners.

Because I have grown up in the Internet age, and because information is just a Google search on my mobile phone away, sometimes I spend time thinking, “I wondering what ever happened to (this band)?” Self was one of those bands that I searched within the last few months to see if they were still around, and what they had been doing since 1999.

Self are, in fact, still around, though not as active as they once were. Pretty much always a one-man project, Matt Mahaffey has released a few digital singles under the Self moniker within the last few years, but has not put out a full length since Dreamworks Records shelved Ornament and Crime nearly a decade ago.

(on dat red vinyl)

Given that people love the idea of “The Anniversary,” Self’s long out of print debut, 1995’s Subliminal Plastic Motives is getting its 20th anniversary reissue treatment (for the first time on vinyl!) a year early, courtesy of Fat Possum Records.

SPM has not aged incredibly well, but it also hasn’t aged poorly. It’s charmingly antiquated, shall we say, or quite quaint in how precious it comes across at times. In a post-Weezer world—1995—one could argue that this is just a straight up 90s “alt rock” record, with a heavy emphasis on the “alt.” And in a pre-Odelay world, Mahaffey is on some near proto-Beck level shit, specifically on the jazz piano infused, half-rapped/half-sung late album track “Big Important Nothing.”

As a whole, SPM walks a really fine line: it is an incredibly fun record that is full of big pop hooks, and is often rather enjoyable; but the flip side of that is that there are some truly cringe worthy moments—mostly lyrical, but sometimes due to some questionable arrangements.

On the surface, these songs appear to be rather simple pop songs, but after a few listens, it becomes clear that there’s some pretty interesting and complex stuff happening here—Mahaffey deserves some kudos for having such lofty intentions on a debut record—not only does he rely heavily on alternative rock, and the aforementioned jazzy moments, there are elements of funk and hip-hop blended in throughout.

It’s worth noting that you don’t have to be an audiophile to hear the difference between the 20^th anniversary reissue remastering when compared to the 1995 CD release. Straight from Mahaffey himself, via the band’s Facebook page, he says—

…The album was mastered by Bob Ludwig close to 10 times originally for the compact disc. The final result being, to my ears, very harsh, tinny, & compressed. This was no fault of Bob's, as he was under direct orders to make it sound like a smiley face rock EQ.....but I've always loathed the CD version. The vinyl, however, is cut from his VERY FIRST mastering…

And this is true—from the moment the needle hit the vinyl, I noticed a fuller, much richer sound, in comparison to original version of the album I had been accustomed to hearing.

Self- So Low

Self- Lost My Senses

Subliminal Plastic Motives isn’t a record for everyone. If you were heavy into the alternative rock boom of the mid 1990s, or have a love of guitar-driven power pop, this is the kind of record you should stop what you are doing and run out to grab. But if you have a love of mid-90s alt rock, maybe you already have it, so I’m just preaching to the choir.

If you don’t like alternative rock from the 1990s—what’s wrong with you? Just kidding. But seriously though, this is the kind of big, fun record that everybody should check out at least once. As much as I hate to say it, it’s a “grower,” and you begin to notice more subtleties about it and appreciate it for what it is with each subsequent listen.

Subliminal Plastic Motives is available now on CD and LP, via Fat Possum.