Art Alexakis, a singer-songwriter from Portland (born in Los Angeles and having passed through San Francisco’s Colorfinger), whose biography reads like a Charles Dickens novel, decided to vent his existential anger through the melodic grunge style that was popular in Seattle.

The EP Nervous And Weird (T/K, 1993), which included the original version of Electra Made Me Blind, presents Everclear as the poorer cousins of Nirvana, yet at the same time highlights Alexakis’s talent as a storyteller of the downtrodden.

World Of Noise (T/K, 1993) marks the maturation of the muse for this chronicler of society’s outcasts and misfits. Trust Fund and especially Nervous And Weird succeed in blending the rough-edged sounds of Seattle grunge with the polished tones of Californian power-pop, but the most compelling songs are those (Your Genius Hands, Losers Make Good) in which Alexakis channels the despair of a life lived too fast. Fire Maple Song captures the most melodramatic narrative, beginning softly in an almost acoustic, forest-folk style before erupting into a vehement R&B shouter’s roar.

Sparkle And Fade (Capitol, 1995) is the album that (somewhat surprisingly) turns them into stars. Alexakis nails the melody of Santa Monica, propelling the band to the top of the sales charts. The album is almost a concept, dedicated to small-town bourgeois life, to the false Summerland of their childhood. The acoustic ballad Strawberry and the emotionally charged Heartspark Dollarsign read like pages from a suicidal diary.

The lyrics, however, transcend the subject to sketch deeper, almost mythical allegories. The female figures are particularly symbolic, fatal bringers of grief, from Queen Of The Air to Heroin Girl. A long sequence of songs seems to chase the same anti-heroine—a spider-woman compelling the man to make crucial choices—from Electra Made Me Blind (directly invoking Greek tragedy), through Pale Green Stars, You Make Me Feel Like A Whore, Nehalem, and concluding with Her Brand New Skin. The final track, My Sexual Life, therefore reads more like a philosophical essay than the tragicomic reflection it is.

Meanwhile, Thunder Road and Sail Away remain close to the album’s emotional core, expressing a desperate need to escape one’s fate—travel songs that are also yearnings for moral resurrection. Without Alexakis’s lyrics, these would be fairly ordinary border-genre songs; thanks to those lyrics, they become pieces of heart thrown into the great, merciless mess of life.

Having further refined the production, Art Alexakis presents himself on So Much For The Afterglow (Capitol, 1997) with all the credentials to dethrone Nirvana as the kings of youthful angst. Perhaps also thanks to the star-level paychecks now pouring in, Alexakis has stopped screaming like a desperate man. Wrapped in comfortable layers of keyboards, brass, strings, and backing vocals, he delivers the power-pop of the title track (fiery riffs and a driving cadence), the ballad I Will Buy A New Life (gospel organ ā la The Band and fatalistic delivery reminiscent of Tom Petty), and the shuffle of Everything To Everyone (tension restrained like Green Day with staccato keyboard arrangements ā la The Cars).
These are highly professional tracks in which the former street urchin, orphaned of everything, finds a miraculous compromise between form (the quintessence of modern pop production) and content (depression elevated to a religion). Even when the guitar noise reaches alarming levels, the chorus remains gentle and seductive. Tracks like Normal Like You, Amphetamine, and Like A California King flow in the spirit of classic, elegant rock, perhaps finally reaching the broad audience that the later Replacements failed to capture.
Why I Don't Believe In God deploys the banjo for a Wilco- or Son Volt-style detour. Father Of Mine recalls Santa Monica but without the same pathos. Alexakis’s potential as a guitarist is well illustrated by the scorching instrumental El Distorto De Melodica. Overall, this is the mature album of a troubled and perhaps inconsistent figure, yet one who combines the talent of a storyteller with the cunning of a star.

With Songs From An American Movie: Vol 1 (Dreamworks, 2000), Everclear delivered a concept album that is as eclectic as a summary of popular American music, as soulful as a passionate tribute to their country and people, and often as lush as a symphony. It is obviously meant to be a definitive statement of sort, private and public, artistic and "political". Alexakis' depressed love stories pull it together and give it the cinematic quality that the Fleetwood-Mac-grade music can best exploit.
Musically, there is little that the trio does not do. Learning How To Smile is a sneering, Tom Petty-ian litany that soars in an profusion of driving orchestral sounds. AM Radio (an upbeat, festive rhythm and blues shuffle), Here We Go Again (a syncopated funk-rock a` la Spin Doctors with a horn fanfare), Now That It's Over (backwards drumming a` la Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks and a propulsive chorus of distortions and strings) are not only pleasant tunes but also concentrates of stylistic experiments.
Brown Eyed Girl (that seems to mock the similarly-titled Van Morrison hit) and the jangling, romantic Wonderful are also catchy enough to keep the band solvent.
No doubt Alexakis is a skilled arranger, who has learned his craft from the likes of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector, and can turn pretty much any refrain into an epic sonic excursion. The aesthetics, though, somewhat detracts from the emotion, as most songs sound like background muzak rather than anthemic messages (wallpaper rather than reportage).

Surprisingly, the second volume of their imaginary soundtrack, Songs From An American Movie: Vol 2 (Capitol, 2000), is a solemn and touching tribute to Nirvana-style grunge and to blue-collar rock, thereby fusing the pathos of alienated urban kids and of disillusioned suburban workers. The fresco is ambitious (sprinkled with the hardcore of All Fucked Up and the dark, cryptic instrumental Halloween Americana), but sincere, and the band is blessed with enough melodic talent to succeed (Slide is an embarassement to Brit-pop's decade-old search for a good refrain). That melodic flow is wed to a forceful, granitic sound, whether the boogie progression of Misery Whip or the hypnotic, Led Zeppelin-ian riff of Babytalk (or, for that matter, the parody in form of a demented singalong of Rock Star).
The band has mastered the art of dynamically changing the mood and the intensity of a song. Both the devilish angst of When It All Goes Wrong and the laid-back country-rock of Out Of My Depth explode in burning guitar riffs and agonizing growls. It's like having the Soul Asylum start a song and the Husker Du close it.
Elsewhere, though, the band lets the mood relax and indulges in simpler, less tense, harmonic constructions: The Good Witch Of The North is a folk fable; Overwhelming is a bittersweet serenade; and Song From An American Movie Pt 2 is a neurotic, Neil Young-ian ballad that closes the album on an epic and mournful tone.
The various sides of Everclear fuse perhapes better than ever. Certainly the scope of the two albums is awe-inspiring and the results are thought-inspiring.

Welcome To The Drama Club (Eleven Seven, 2006) is an odd collection of songs that mimic old Everclear songs, performed with a crew of newcomers who mimic the old Everclear sound.