Lost Classics: Mazzy Star “So Tonight That I Might See”

They’re nobody’s buzz bands anymore. But since 1993, MAGNET has discovered and documented more great music than memory will allow. The groups may have broken up or the albums may be out of print, but this time, history is written by the losers. Here are some of the finest albums that time forgot but we remembered in issue #75, plus all-new additions to our list of Lost Classics.

:: MAZZY STAR
So Tonight That I Might See // Capitol, 1993
If Intro To Psychedelia wasn’t included in your high-school curriculum, Mazzy Star’s second album was there to educate you. Ex-Opal maestro David Roback perfected his brand of glacial, hypnotic folk with Hope Sandoval as his icy chanteuse. Pretty radio hit “Fade Into You” was a seductive gateway drug that pointed back toward So Tonight’s influences: the Doors, Bert Jansch and the Jesus And Mary Chain. Sandoval’s opiated Patsy Cline moans were a soft take on alt-rock’s alienated weirdness that her contemporaries weren’t prepared to offer. The anti-social Roback and Sandoval may have sounded like they wanted to disappear, but the ghostly echo they created still haunts.

Catching Up: Sandoval, who formed Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions and released 2001’s Bavarian Fruit Bread, has collaborated with Air, the Jesus And Mary Chain, Massive Attack, the Twilight Singers and others. Roback worked on Beth Orton’s 1999 album Central Reservation before moving to Norway. He wrote music for and appeared as himself in 2004 Nick Nolte/Maggie Cheung film Clean.

“Fade Into You”: