Objective Subjectivity: Phase 2. Objective Subjectivity: Phase 2 or my…
By: Eli Taylor
Tags: Grunge, Music, Subjectivity, Alternative, Rock

Objective Subjectivity: Phase 2

“You’re on to something good…”

It was October of 2017. I had just listened to Local H’s “Pack up the Cats,” and decided to coalesce my thoughts into a succinct and thrillingly controversial facebook post that read: “Unpopular opinion: Local H > Nirvana.” Clearly I had overestimated its impact because it received one lone “surprise face” emoji reaction and two comments, the latter of which was from an old family friend who simply and directly suggested I slap myself. My takeaway from this social interaction (or lack of) was either:

I was wrong or None of my Facebook friends give a shit about Local H.

There is probably truth to both of these conclusions.

If you’ve been following along, phase two of my quest has gotten off to a rocky start with Augustana fighting hard to keep its slot and Benjamins dangling on the edge of the Top 100 albums precipice. So I was already on high alert walking into album #3. Plus, adding to this heightened level of scrutiny, “As Good As Dead,” was the first album that surprised me by making the Top 100 contenders list during phase one. But it had done so over 3 years ago, at the very start of this endeavor. I had only listened to 83 of what would eventually become 2000+ albums. I was bound to be more care-free and loose with my contenders. So this time around, “As Good As Dead,” got the harshest of listens I could possibly muster.

And I walked away from that first listen, yet again, questioning my subjectivity.

But I was unwilling to leave it at that. There had to be something more that drew me to reexamine my relationship with this album three years ago. Something more than burning nostalgia for the hours I spent playing solitaire and blasting it through headphones on my CD walkman or the teenage glee of just how many times he says “motherfucker” on an album without a parental advisory label (which meant I could sneak it in under my parents’ noses). Why did this album speak to me again and why did it compel me to pit it against the reign of Nirvana?

So I did what everyone does these days when searching for answers: I turned to the internet. A quick google search for “Local H As Good As Dead review,” revealed that I wasn’t the only one positively impacted by this album. Stereogum, although clearly preferring “Pack Up the Cats,” celebrated Local H’s “body of work that compares favorably to grunge’s original Fantastic Four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains).” New Noise argued that “to lump [As Good As Dead]…in with all the rest of the alt/grunge bands that overflowed in the wake of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain’s absence would be a mistake,” praising the the album for “match[ing] the sentiment of the era, but com[ing] from a much more sincere place — and with creative mastery.”

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the self-proclaimed, “Dean of American Rock Critics,” Robert Christgau, while clearly acknowledging Local H’s inferiority to Nirvana (”it will never replace the original,”) writes, “they figured out enough about riffs and hooks to transform sound into song, and now evoke a tragic Seattle trio who shall remain nameless.”

I wasn’t alone in my elevation of this band or this album and I certainly wasn’t alone in favorably comparing them to Kurt and Co. And that confirmation, that collective subjectivity, cemented “As Good As Dead,” on the list.

Yesterday, I put on the album while unloading random boxes and bins at our new apartment. A friend who was helping out, after humming along to a couple of tracks, asked for the name of the band. Perhaps if more of my social network knew of Local H my opinion wouldn’t be so unpopular after all.