Back Catalog: Semisonic
Great Divide (1996)
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Life and death aren’t cosmic opposites; love and death are. While that may sound like the stuff of a lame junior high slumber party, it’s also a perfect platform for pop music. Throughout Great Divide, Semisonic’s debut full-length album from 1996, this notion is explored and extrapolated on 12 wonderfully saccharine tracks—each tinged with an unexpected sadness.
The members of Semisonic don’t just sing about death, they harmonize about it. The sweetness of its voices—especially frontman Dan Wilson’s agile falsetto—is disarming. It sounds like these should be songs about dandelions and female unicorns, and if you don’t listen closely, then there’s a good chance you’ll remember them as such. But a darker theme of mortality threads the album, with first-person statements like “It’s feeling like I’m already dead” (the opening line of “Down In Flames”) and “Keep thinking of the day I die when I lose my heavy load” (the sing-song chorus of “If I Run”).
Mind you, death is not an unwelcome specter on this album. It’s repeatedly invoked as a release from the burdens of life. This is no Nick Cave record, after all—this is Semisonic, a group that went on to make an entire album, All About Chemistry, devoted almost exclusively to how awesome love and sex can be.
