Destination Universe

One can draw many parallels between Material Issue and the Smithereens.

Their first/early albums focused on typical boy-meets-girl-is-later-alienated-and-gets-jealous themes and featured uncluttered production and clean guitar tones. Later works found them cranking up the Marshalls and getting a bit more shouty.

Destination Universe is a rarity in this evolution: plenty of rawk but plenty of hooks, harmony-laced choruses and memorable lyrics. It's less quirky than International Pop Overthrow and less bombastic than Freak City Soundtrack. Jim Ellison seems to be relatively free of the demons that would later lead him to take his own life.

It's a shame that this is currently out of print, but if you can find a copy it's the best place to start with MI and one of the best power pop albums you'll hear from any band.

Most people probaly have no idea who these guys are. What a shame. Destination Universe is Material Issues's 2nd major label album released in 1992, and showed better production and the harder edge that would go on to dominate the rest of the Chicago trio's work until Jim Ellisons untimely suicide in 1996. Producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, etc..)mixed the cd's first single 'What Girls Want' and this is by far the best track. Overall this is Material Issue's worst release of the four albums released by the group, as the album looses steam as it gets into the latter tracks, though tracks 1-5 are great power pop rock tunes. On a side note, song 5-the track 'Everything' was covered by a group I cant't recall in the late 90's and became a top-40 hit on modern radio.