Break Up Your Band

Sponge - “Wax Ecstatic (To Sell Angelina)”
Wax Ecstatic, 1996

I don’t care what anybody says about the first Sponge album, Rotting Pinata, I love it. It gets a hard time from some critics and music fans—read the especially condescending review on AllMusic—but I don’t go in for any of that. It’s a punchy and powerful record of mid-90s grunge rock with some especially powerful hooks. These guys knew what they were doing on that record and they knew how to write songs.

How the band that made Rotting Pinata got from that album to this piece of garbage follow up is beyond me. Drugs, and some tragically low-quality drugs at that, is the only explanation I can come up with. And by low-quality I don’t mean the effects were weak I mean they were cut with baking soda that expired a year before it was pulled from the back of the fridge. “Wax Ecstatic” is a catchy tune but it is a far cry from anything they were doing on their first album and this is the only salvageable track from the record.

Things only got worse from here, people. Have you listened to any Sponge albums since this one? Don’t. I know I’m really putting a cramp in everyone’s day by telling you to not listen to Sponge albums, but it’s for the best. My sincere apologies go out to the hundreds of you that I’m certain were in the midst of firing up Spotify with anxious anticipation of finally digging into 2003’s For All The Drugs In The World but you will thank me in the long run. Go listen to New Miserable Experience instead, it’s twenty years old now.