Deep Blue Something

Brothers Todd and Toby Pipes were central to the band that emerged from Denton, alongside drummer John Kirtland and guitarists Kirk Tatom and Clay Bergus. An early album, 11th Song, preceded Home, the record that brought their music to a much wider audience through Interscope in 1995. Their name sounded cryptic; the songs usually preferred clear melodies and everyday language.

Home places Breakfast at Tiffany's alongside Halo, Josey and a title track that gives the album another point of emotional focus. The guitars can shimmer rather than simply push the beat, while the rhythm section keeps everything moving with little fuss. That combination helped a conversational lyric sit comfortably inside the increasingly crowded alternative radio of the middle nineties.

The international life of Breakfast at Tiffany's extended into 1996, when it reached number one in Britain. Its success sometimes flattened the band's identity into one familiar refrain. The original recording is more interesting than a nostalgia tag suggests: its couple are negotiating a very thin piece of common ground, with an upbeat arrangement doing little to resolve the underlying doubt.

Byzantium followed in 1998 and a self-titled album in 2000. Those records continued the group's melodic writing without reproducing the same moment of mass recognition. Deep Blue Something's catalogue belongs to the less abrasive side of American alternative rock, where a chiming guitar and an uncertain conversation could do the work of a much louder statement.