Crush was the fourth album by The Doughboys, and their major-label debut, released in 1993 on A&M Records. The Doughboys were from Montreal, and had been around since the mid-80s. They came out of the punk rock scene, and were part of a wave of melodic punk bands inspired by the Descendents, who mixed their punk influences with more standard rock song structure and production. Other bands that played in this style included Big Drill Car, The Chemical People, and even the later 7 Seconds. The Doughboys were both the most popular exponents of this style and the ones who most fully embraced the more straightforward pop and rock elements of what they were doing. When they released their first LP, Whatever, in 1987, it was easy to see the Doughboys as a punk band, albeit one from the more melodic end of the spectrum. But as they evolved and moved further towards the pop elements of their sound, what they were doing confused and disturbed a lot of punk rockers. Back in those days, there had been less of an attempt made to delineate the borders of what constituted punk rock, or hardcore; in 1986, bands were either obviously part of punk rock, or they were obviously not. As the Doughboys evolved, punks didn’t know whether to continue seeing them as a punk band, or to consider them as having crossed over to more commercial genres. Meanwhile, without any real groundwork laid in the more commercial rock scenes, the Doughboys had no base from which to build once they landed on a major label. Much like Husker Du before them, their sales on a major label were lackluster, and they ended up falling apart after a couple of albums and disappearing from the cultural landscape. Today, they are almost entirely forgotten.
Of course, that narrative of the career arc of the Doughboys is from my American perspective. What it leaves out almost entirely is the fact that the Doughboys, being Canadian, enjoyed a great deal of government-mandated support from radio and video programming in their native country. In Canada, a significant percentage of radio and video airplay is required to be devoted to Canadian artists, so any halfway-decent Canadian band is pretty much guaranteed to achieve some fame, at least in their homeland. In Canada, Crush went gold, and three of its singles were Top 40 hits. The biggest of those hits, “Shine,” was declared the 26th best Canadian single of all time by Chart Magazine. And yet, as I said, here in America they are nearly forgotten. The alt-rock fans and indie kids never heard of them at all. The punks, if they credit any of their stuff as worthwhile, focus mainly on their earlier material. I must admit that I only discovered their music very recently. In fact, I’ve only had a copy of Crush for a matter of weeks, and wouldn’t have written about the Doughboys on here at all if it hadn’t grown on me so thoroughly over the course of those weeks. This is a band that deserves to be remembered in places besides Canada. And really, it should probably be recognized that, despite its relative lack of punkness, Crush is just about their finest hour.
