Top 40 '90s albums, #25: Goldfinger — Hang-Ups

This is an album I listened to a lot as a teenager. I remember the first time I heard the album’s opener, “Superman,” and you probably know exactly where I’m going. We don’t actually need to reference Tony Hawk Pro Skater, the 1999 video game that shaped video games for at least a decade, but it’s also an important part of my engagement with the music. It was absolutely playing a demo of the game, I’m sure, and I bet it was with my cousins.

But here’s the thing. There’s a very real chance I heard the song earlier than that. That’s my memory, but that’s sort of everyone’s memory if they’re of a certain age, right? I was a ska kid, and I came of age smack dab in the middle of the third-wave ska movement. It’s entirely possible that I actually owned this album before I played the game, and that I felt smug about having heard the song before my cousins. (I hope I wasn’t too smudge [sic] and arrogant, but teenagers are a special type.) I might have even heard it at a friend’s house, hanging out in his basement — I know his older brother had the album, and I was so excited to see it. (I imagine I’d pirated a few of the songs on the album.) It’s all tangential, but so much of music is tangential anyway, isn’t it?

I went through a long phase of thinking that “Superman” was the worst song on the album. I’ve moved past that opinion — I think it’s actually a near-perfect opener for Hang-Ups. A fantastic track one, side one. It’s a high energy song on an album that’s intentionally a bit downbeat, and Goldfinger was a band known for their high-energy style. Their self-titled debut, noted especially for the very successful “Here in Your Bedroom,” really leaned into the ska punk vibe. That wasn’t my introduction to the band, though — Hang-Ups was my first exposure, in one way or another.

That high-octane start almost betrays what’s a mostly sincere album. It’s fundamentally a break-up album, whether it’s literally one or not. And it’s got its share of frenetic tracks: the one-two of “Question” and “Disorder,” “Too Late,” “I Need to Know” — it’s a short list, though, and not what you might have expected from a band plying its trade in ska punk.

It’s funny. This is the only Goldfinger album I’ll still listen to. I actually gave it a pretty big rest for a long time. When I went away to college, the CD stayed home. I probably hadn’t listened to the album since I was 16 or something. When I finally graduated, moved home and got my drivers license at the ripe age of 25, I put together a few CD folios; this album made it in. “Why not?” I thought. I listened to it again on a road trip home from attending my best friend’s wedding on a 12-hour road trip, and I was a little stunned. This wasn’t the prototypical ska punk album I remembered — it wasn’t what a listener might expect from “Superman.” This was something with more nuance, but it was also something that featured some recurring musical themes, some great production, and, yes, some of that ska punk silliness. Whether it’s “SMP” or one of several ‘hidden’ tracks at the end of “Chris Cayton,” it’s here, but it’s not so prevalent. Even the first hidden track, “It Isn’t Just Me,” is a genuinely lovely song.

I guess my thinking that “Superman” is a great opener on this album is maybe a little metatextual. While it’s a undeniably classic song, it’s probably the only way to introduce their existing fans en masse to the album. The band would return to something more fast-paced in Stomping Ground a couple years later. The band went through plenty of sonic changes afterward, and I sort of lost track of what they were doing after Open Your Eyes in 2002. They’re still going at it today, and John Feldmann became a well-regarded pop and pop-punk producer.

Goldfinger, really, had no business making an album as cohesive and considered as Hang-Ups in 1997. It’s such a blip in their catalog — it doesn’t match what they did later, it doesn’t match what they did before. I’m still a little convinced they stumbled into it, because “SMP” and the hidden track “Chicken McNuggets” show a real disregard for the work done here. With some revisions, I genuinely think this could have been a truly timeless album. I still rated it very highly here, and I’ll stand by that.

So, great album. We’ve got one more ska album coming up here, though we’ll have to wait a bit to get to it.