Deep Blue Something

  • Deep Blue Something
  • 11th Song (Crystal Clear Sound) 1993 
  • Home (Rainmaker) 1994  (Rainmaker/Interscope) 1995 
  • Deep Blue Something (Aezra) 2001 

Houston-bred brothers Toby (guitar/vocals) and Todd (bass/vocals) Pipes lead this Texas quartet, which made a commercial splash in late ’95 with the catchy romantic power-pap of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Bringing the brain-dead grandiosity of late-’70s harmony-rockers like Styx and Supertramp to the modern world, Deep Blue Something (formed in ’91 at the University of North Texas as Leper Messiah) combines big acoustic/electric strumming and airy, melodramatic singing into a resoundingly hollow album unimproved by its good intentions. (On Home, the faintly feminist “Over” sarcastically castigates a drunk’s sexual desire, but includes the sure-to-be-misappropriated refrain, “Flip her over, man she is done.”) “Souls suffer the landscape/In shrouds of dew, as ghosts.” All right, Denton!

[Ira Robbins]