With only a few months separating their previous two albums for Epic, Emmet Swimming took a different approach and spent an extra year to release 1998′s Big Night Without You. Surprisingly, the longer downtime had changed little. Still keeping the same paradoxical sense of Morrissey/Marr musical and lyrical themes, though less jangly and more concerned with loping college funk (“Stealing”) and alternative ska (“Sunblock”), Emmet Swimming was enjoyable and sometimes irritating. Some of the instrumentation had improved and the various members were getting more in tune with coming to terms with more polished production techniques, but the band’s popularity had plateaued and the album just didn’t pop as well as some of the older material. – Dean Carlson
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