When people talk about ’90s rock, often they’re talking about Nirvana and grunge. But there was a different brand of rock that ended up dominating the radio for much of the decade. If grunge prized murky guitar textures, pounding drums and lumbering bass lines with attitudinally angsty shouting, other bands were making slightly more sensitive music. Bands like San Francisco’s Third Eye Blind were informed by the era, by a kind of defiant and confrontational veneer, but without the sonic abrasiveness.
Think of bands like Live, the Goo Goo Dolls, the Gin Blossoms — music that maybe wasn’t obsessed with being cool, but which connected with people. Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut came out 20 years ago, and a deluxe re-issue just came out last month to celebrate. It sounded, in places, more like a brooding surfer-guy throwback to the hippie-tinged revivalism of Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians from the late ’80s, with its use of the signature noodle-solo, envelope-filter effect on some tracks, the jangly guitars and soaring vocals. 3EB were muscular, but never relentlessly so. Songs like “How’s It Going To Be,” “Semi-Charmed Kinda Life” and “Jumper” are still played on the radio today. They were seriously hooky, but not afraid to let a song unspool into a little half-rapped digression or a mini psychedelic vortex.
The band released a new E.P. at the end of last year, and also earned headlines by sounding off against the Republican party and its policies during the 2016 election season.
Third Eye Blind performs at at the Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Road, Wallingford, Sunday, July 2, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $39 and up. 203-265-1501, livenation.com.
