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Better Than Ezra Releases 'Closer'
08/07/2001 3:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Neal Weiss
(8/7/01, 3 p.m. ET) -- Better Than Ezra returns today (August 7) with Closer, its first album in three years and its fourth album overall. The album, from Beyond Music, features first single, "Extra Ordinary," already making waves on Billboard's Adult Top 40 and Modern Rock Tracks charts.
Better Than Ezra frontman Kevin Griffin tells LAUNCH that Closer is "the most focused album" the group has made. "We had time to sift through a lot of songs and really think about what we wanted to say with this album," he says. "And also, for me writing the songs, I feel like these are overall the strongest batch of songs that I've been able to come up with. And then, you know, working them up with Travis [McNabb] and Tom [Drummond], we've come up with ideas that we haven't in the past and worked with people that we haven't worked with in the past. And also working in a way that we've never done, you know, working in our own studio and really knowing the environment."
Better Than Ezra co-produced the new album with Ethan Allen, who worked with the band on its 1996 effort, Friction, Baby; and Brad Wood (Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Pete Yorn). Guests include Beck collaborator DJ Swamp as well as Beck's father, string arranger David Campbell (Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," Alanis Morissette's "Uninvited," Green Day's "Good Riddance [Time Of Your Life].")
The trio celebrates its latest release with a two-night stand tonight (August 7) and Wednesday (August 8) at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The group also appears on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on Wednesday, while Griffin joins Politically Incorrect Thursday (August 9).
Better Than Ezra's last album, How Does Your Garden Grow?, arrived in 1998. However, relations with the group's former label, Elektra Entertainment, soured and soon dissolved entirely, thus slowing the group's momentum.
-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles
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