33 1/3 Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See by Anthony Gomez III
Big thanks to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for sharing
an advanced copy of the Anthony Gomez III’s thoughtful and reflective entry
into the 33 1/3 series: Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See, an
analytic look into an overlooked 90s classic. I was very excited to find this
title in the series since So Tonight That I Might See is one of those
formative albums that traveled with me through high school, college and beyond.
I relistened to the album and the other Mazzy Star albums while reading this,
and just hearing those chords strummed with a tambourine backing and Hope
Sandoval’s reverb twinged voice languidly singing these lyrics of love and loss
ushered in a rush of emotions. I didn’t learn about Mazzy Star until “Fade Into
You” became a big hit. This was before the internet was readily available, and I
was reliant on radio and friends with older siblings to learn about music.
Furthermore, I mostly listened to hip-hop and metal, but by the time this song
hit the airwaves, my tastes were changing. As Gomez III explains in the book, Mazzy
Star’s sound “is out of place and out of time.” I couldn’t agree more with this
idea that their music feels “old and new at once” and is similarly haunting,
which makes it all the more relevant that Mazzy Star could appear in movies
like Batman Forever as well as more arthouse fare like Stealing
Beauty. In fact, Gomez documents the appearances of “Fade Into You” in
popular culture, and I was shocked to see how this song has been used over time
and in such disparate settings (The O.C.?). Nevertheless, this is a testament
to the song’s and the band’s enduring character and appealing to the “strange,
unsettling, and beautiful world of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks” as Gomez III
explains. I thought that this reference is also fitting since it relates to Mazzy
Star’s kind of uncanny music, where it is strangely familiar, yet also so different
and idiosyncratic for its time. When bands were getting louder and guitars more
distorted, as labels sought to cash in on grunge and the 90s emergence of punk,
Mazzy Star went softer, quieter, and retreated to the desert or the late 60s
area outside of the valley, finding kinship with some of the lesser celebrated sounds
and voices like The Doors and Love. Gomez III uses these bands as frames of
reference for Mazzy Star, highlighting not only the fact that they were LA
bands emerging from tumultuous times and using pop-like sounds in much darker,
menacing ways.
Since both Sandoval and Roback didn’t give many interviews
during Mazzy Star’s existence, Gomez III turns to Mazzy Star’s influences and
forebearers to provide some insight into the environment, scene and conditions
that influenced Mazzy Star’s formation and sound. I enjoyed this aspect- I hadn’t
really thought about how Mazzy Star sounded like The Doors or even Love, despite
covering an Arthur Lee song, but it makes sense, and Gomez III’s research
provides some useful insight into the influence of the Mexican-American sounds
of East LA that maybe aren’t as apparent in Mazzy Stars sound, but influenced
some other popular bands from the 90s and Sandoval’s own musical tastes. I also
appreciated Gomez III’s assertion of how Mazzy Star’s music influenced female indie
rockers, who he terms Sad Girls, like Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast,
Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Mitski. It is interesting to think about this
influence in not just the lyrical content, but I think their music is so much
different from Mazzy Star’s. If anything, I feel like the music matches up more
with bands like the Cowboy Junkies or Acetone, whose kind of hushed sounds (and
use of shakers) are more aligned with Mazzy Star. I also hear strands of their
desert music in Hermano Gutiérrez and Tommy Guerror’s excellent Los Days, that feature
acoustic-strummed rhythm guitars with slide-type leads. Nevertheless, Gomez III
presents a nice framework to show how Mazzy Star were influenced by the LA
scene that was less heard (or maybe unheard music like the band X). Gomez III
suggests that the downtrodden and undersides of LA, kind of like Lynch’s Mulholland
Drive or Blue Velvet, hold a darker side that runs counter to the
shine and sheen of the more popular and present images. This is where the sound
of Mazzy Star emerged, and it’s that desire to maintain that voice, to stay
true and not do lots of promotions or try to create another “Fade Into You”
that led to the band getting dropped by their label (only to release another
album nearly 17 years after their last release).
In addition to framing the band through both their
influences and who they later influenced, Gomez III gives some background about
how Roback and Sandoval got into music and eventually met through their separate
bands Opal (Roback) and Going Home (Sandoval). I didn’t know much about the
Paisley Underground, the psychedelic revival in the 80s that birthed Rain
Parade, another Roback band, but it was interesting to learn more about this
movement and how bands both hated it yet needed some kind of movement or genre
to get some attention from record companies looking for the next new thing. It
was fascinating to learn that Susana Hoffs lived with Roback, who apparently
got jealous of her early success with the Bangles. However, I really enjoyed
learning more about how there was this kind of underground network of bands who
were trying to eke out their own sounds that weren’t as astringent as the hair
metal or as hard and fast as the punk rock and hardcore emerging from Southern
California at this time. Opal played with bands like Sonic Youth and the
Minutemen, which seems both odd and fascinating. Although Gomez III doesn’t go
into some of the typical details that are sometimes involved in these 33 1/3
books, like focusing on the equipment that was used or the inspiration for the
lyrics, he does present a detailed analysis of the LA scene, musically, socially,
and economically from which Mazzy Star’s two biggest contributors emerged. It’s
also a great book that highlights how this album and this band was just so
different from much of the other music that was on the radio at the time. He
also suggests that because the band had such a unique and out-of-time sound
that this is one of the reasons why the band’s sound has endured and remains
even though it no longer exists. I really enjoyed this book, and although it
doesn’t provide the kind of song-by-song analysis or reconstruction of the
recording sessions, it does present an interesting assessment of some of the
factors, especially the unheard music of LA, that influenced this band. If
anything, I really enjoyed breaking out this album to listen to it again and
feel all the hope and heartbreak that it evokes. “I think it’s strange you
never knew.” Highly recommended!
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