Gin Blossoms

For anyone who found Universal's full-length Gin Blossoms DVD Just South of Nowhere a little too much disc, along comes The Best of the Gin Blossoms in the label's 20th Century Masters -- DVD Collection, assembling six of the group's promotional videos. "Hey Jealousy" is the warm-up for the achingly catchy and angst-ish yet cool "Found Out About You," and offers some clever multiple split-screen effects and variable aspect ratio images. "Found Out About You" is still one of the more quietly disturbing videos the band has made, filled with images that, when they're not vividly focused on the bandmembers' instruments, are bleak, cold, and chillingly textured. The international version of "Til I Hear It From You" follows and is more conventional, like the song it's attached to -- "Until I Fall Away," by contrast, is a pretty straight performance video for much of its length, and "Follow You Down" is the one attempt by the group to generate an exciting video, utilizing an appropriately paced song; the quick cutting and the tension in the song itself feed the video's overall pacing, and make this the most easily re-accessible (as in multiple viewings) of their videos, if not the most memorable. The disc opens automatically on a simple menu that permits access to the individual videos and a "play all" option in the default position, and the packaging includes the relevant production and composition credits. The audio is mastered at a very high volume level, equivalent to early- 21st century CDs. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide