Label: Equal Vision
Reissued 11/1/2024, Originally released 1999
From there the album takes you back to the earliest days of the band's history of playing house shows on the crunchy, riff-driven "Side By Side" and drops you into what it's like to be to on tour with your best friends when all cylinders are firing on the instantly catchy, psychedelica-tinged "Kerouac & Cassady." Next we move onto the band's unplanned rise to stardom and relentless work ethic on the driving and uplifting rocker, "It's Such A Beautiful World." "This song is about the Through Being Cool era and things are starting to heat up," Conley says of the latter track, which sounds like an unholy amalgam between Weezer and glam metal. "At this point we are flying to performances all over the world so in the first stanza I say, 'If we get stuck on a plane, we're skydiving to the show.' It's such an incredible life to get to live and we were nuts for it and enjoying every second of it." Ultimately 9 is sonic evidence not only that there's a reason we are alive in the world, but it's a miracle that Conley rightfully encourages us to celebrate.
Track listing:
- All-Star Me
- You Vandal
- Shoulder to the Wheel
- Rocks Tonic Juice Magic
- Holly Hox, Forget Me Nots
- Third Engine
- My Sweet Fracture
- The Vast Spoils of America (From the Badlands Through the Ocean)
- The Last Lie I Told
- Do You Know What I Love the Most?
- Through Being Cool
- Banned from the Back Porch