On 'Feeling Strangely Fine,' I think a lot of the songs were written from a more folk-music point of view, and Dan wrote it all to hold up on acoustic guitar. "So a lot of the emotion and a lot of the harmony is keyboard style as opposed to guitar style. "Dan wrote a lot of the new songs on that piano," said bassist John Munson. But unlike the 1998 album, Wilson's signature buzzsaw guitar on "Chemistry" is an accessory on most songs, rather than the glue - in the same way that three- and four-note keyboard leads adorned Wilson's guitar-driven rock of old. Like "Closing Time," the new album's first and title track is musky with airplay love.
But its final lyric: "Every new beginning/Comes from some other beginning's end," could prove prescient.Īfter all, the hit single begat Wilson's new piano, and the spindly, bespectacled songsmith's new ivories are the musical bricks and mortar for "All About Chemistry," Semisonic's latest batch of Minnea-pop-olis tunes released earlier this month. Wilson's paean to the lustful trolling at last-call-for-alcohol stands alone as the band's only major U.S. Three years later, Semisonic is looking to peel off the one-hit-wonder label. The ubiquitous single vaulted the indie-pop-rock trio out of the Midwest, parked itself on pop and rock radio for a year and found a permanent home at baseball stadiums, where the ding-dong-ding-dong keyboard intro announces a game's final innings as the closer jogs to the mound. MINNEAPOLIS - Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson bought himself a new piano as a reward for the success of "Feeling Strangely Fine," the 1998 album that opened with the Grammy-nominated "Closing Time."