Semisonic is one of the more high-profile flameout acts of the 1990's. They enjoyed some justified local success in the mid-1990's, which was enough to parlay into a major record deal that yielded one huge album with one very huge song, "Closing Time", which will be forever burned into the zeitgeist of modern American culture. Sadly, it never got any better than that for Semisonic, and the hotly-anticipated following album was a crushing disappointment, placing the band on a permanent hiatus that exists to this day.
I hadn't heard any of the other songs here other than the ones from Feeling Strangely Fine, of which "Closing Time" is actually one of the weaker ones. The earlier stuff still stands the test of time, with a little wisp of grunge apparent in songs like "The Prize", while stuff like "Across the Great Divide" deserve a lot more attention than they ever got. It isn't hard to see why the later stuff didn't catch on with the fans, feeling very lackadaisical and lethargic in places.
Usually these Millennium Collection discs are too thin to be of much interest to anyone other than the most casual fans, but I feel like this disc is all the Semisonic I need for the foreseeable future.
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