Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experience (A&M)

SO NEW MISERABLE Experience was recorded at Memphis' Ardent Studios, where Big Star made their three minuscule-selling albums 20 years ago — and, as the Gin Blossoms' Jesse Valenzuela relates in awe in his group's new and charming bio, where "we got to use the same amps Big Star got to record with." Now that an entire generation of impressionables thinks the biggest bands of the past 25 years must've been the Velvet Underground and Big Star — heck, that's all anybody cool ever talks about, right? — maybe someone should clue them in: Both groups sold diddly.