There are far more layers of irony here than any one band should have. We've got the punning band name, which actually counts double because it's a play on "steel embrace" but also you can steal an embrace like stolen kisses. There are the old leather helmet football guys. Then the title is Do You Have A Formal Dining Area? which is hilarious because they are rockers, not formal diners, or possibly old time football players, who are also not formal diners.
Another old timey photo on the back, which I was unable to get a good picture of despite two whole tries, and some handwritten or pseudo-handwritten song titles, one of which is a play on a Clash song. It's impossible this album came from any decade but the 1990s, and indeed it's from 1996, by which point grunge/slacker culture had broken, shocked the world, had its artistic heyday, and spawned a zillion also-ran bands with the same approximate sound of their predecessors and, by and large, a quarter the talent.
Those were my teenage years, and I'm so close to the culture from then that I can tell you the song titles offer further support to the idea that Steal Embrace are in the same lineage as The Flys/Sponge/Our Lady Peace/Seven Mary Three without really being able to articulate why.
The Clash nod and the song titles Guernica and Hyperspace offer some hope for more ambition than I've given the band credit for so far, though on the other hand liking The Clash doesn't equal being The Clash, Guernica's a really famous painting so that's only so special, and I think I only singled out Hyperspace 'cause I listen to so much stoner rock, heavy psych, and space rock that I associate such titles with it and therefore think it points to more diversity of sound than it does.
Guitar, bass, drums, and three "additional musicians" who play unspecified things: once again, solidly in grunge knock-off territory. That then, is the guess, and we'll find out for sure come Friday. It doesn't have to be a bad thing if I'm right; I always have had a soft spot for Got You Where I Want You.
p.s., manufactured and printed in Pennsauken, NJ! That's like 15 minutes from where I grew up. Remember the dirt mall in Mallrats? No, because that's also from the '90s and I'm ancient and Kevin Smith's rep as crude but brilliant went in the toilet with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which was also a million years ago so no one talks about him anymore? Well, there was one in the movie, and there was one just like it in Pennsauken.
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