The Help Machine, Nate

Having no working knowledge of Fastball outside of "The Way" and their other, better, single, hearing a song like "Redeem" or "Surprise Surprise" is exactly what could be reasonably expected: a little slinky, a little sweaty, a little bit of a con, a little bit rock and roll without really being rock and roll. Something dangerous, but limited. You might lose $50, but you won't lose your life.

I recommend the Fastball Wikipedia page, which I assume is managed by band member Tony Scalzo, if only because his is the only name with its own subsequent Wikipedia page. The manner in which this band reached its success is so foreign in 2021 as to be comically illegible to a person who does not care about the business side of music / a person who does not remember 9/11. A journalist saw them! At a local show! And suggested them to the record label! And it worked! Beyond that, there's a little bit of feature-writing going on in the success section, which I think I'd better just copy and paste here to preserve its beauty.

"The members of Fastball still had side jobs as late as January 1998. Tony Scalzo worked the graveyard shift at The Bagel Manufactory in Austin. He, Shuffield, and Zuniga would be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien just four months later."

The Pulitzer for "Best Achievement in Wikipedia Stub Writing goes to... Tony Scalzo!

Sorry, I got sidetracked. The Help Machine. So, you get that bar-smoke Texas shit, then there's "All Gone Fuzzy," where that one-night-stand-who-stole-your-wallet energy is replaced by "They Might Be Giants at their most serious" cosplay. There's also "The Girl You Pretended to Be," which is a joyful little piece of cow-punk that would sound perfect on, uh, an alt-rock station that certainly only existed in the late '90s. "Never Say Never" is the kind of "I'm done with that wild life" song that old artists make; I'll defer to you whether or not you think the sentiment is earned.

I'm not the expert—that'd be Sam Clam's Disco a few links away—but I walk away from this record thinking that Fastball is who they were, the house band for a PG-13 Grindhouse wannabe that could punch up, but only a little. It's all a little southern-fried, a little in-between, a little good. The stakes are low, and so is the bar, so when they get over it it feels a little empty, a little sweet.