If psychedelic music had a voice in '90s post-punk, Mazzy Star may have been its strongest reincarnation. That doesn't necessarily mean that fans of the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead will find the band to their liking, however. Mazzy Star much prefered the dark side of psychedelia, as exemplified by the most distended tracks of the Doors and the Velvet Underground. Their fuzzy guitar workouts and plaintive folky compositions are often suffused in a dissociative ennui that is very much of the 1990s, however much their textures may recall the drug-induced states of vintage psychedelia.
Although Mazzy Star was nominally a full band, they were basically the core duo of guitarist David Roback and singer Hope Sandoval with backing musicians. Roback boasts a long history in the paisley underground, with the Rain Parade and Opal. He came across Sandoval after hearing a tape she had made as part of a folky duo, Going Home. (The Going Home album that Roback subsequently produced remains unissued.) Sandoval ended up replacing Kendra Smith on Opal's final tours. After Opal dissolved, Roback and Sandoval continued to work together as Mazzy Star, and released their first album for Rough Trade, She Hangs Brightly, in 1990.

Rough Trade's U.S. branch went under shortly afterwards, but luckily Mazzy Star were picked up by Capitol, who kept the debut in print and issued their follow-up, 1993's So Tonight That I Might See. There isn't much to differentiate the two albums, though that's not necessarily a criticism. Both share similar strengths and weaknesses: appealingly dreamy and atmospheric arrangements, rambling distorted guitar workouts, and lyrics that mix the haunting and the meaninglessly vague. Tonight That I Might See had been around for about a year before it suddenly got hot, reaching the Top 40, and spinning off a small hit single, "Fade Into You." Even in the wake of this surprise success, Roback and Sandoval remained as enigmatic and aloof as their music, rarely submitting to interviews, and offering mysterious, unhelpful replies when journalists did manage to talk with them.

— Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide


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After listening to this album, my friend from Alabama said the band sounds like they are from New Orleans. My psychedelic-influenced mother said they have a lot of potential, and another friend of mine cried. At a show I attended in San Francisco, a man near me commented to no one in particular that he wanted to marry Hope Sandoval. Another guy turned around, gave him a smile, and nodded his head in agreement.

Mazzy Star weave smoky atmospherics, bluesy lyrics, simple chords, sentimental tunes, and Sandoval's sexy, haunting voice into a sound as solid as steel and as pretty as Victorian iron-work. That sound hit its peak on She Hangs Brightly.

Dave Roback's guitar work hangs and bends in swirling harmony to match the mood of Sandoval's lyrics, while her voice is a tempestuous beacon in a haze of emotions. If the sound is understated, this only serves to highlight the emotional currents swirling below the surface.

The opening track is the album's signature: "Hallah," is about the end of a relationship and watching your lover walk away. The lyrics are sentimental and pleading, but realistic enough to avoid triteness. "Maybe you hold me to blame for all the reasons that you left, but close my eyes and I see your surprise and you're leaving, before my time, baby won't you change your mind." As a whole the album works as a love song, broken into tracks representing love's constituent parts: commitment, desire, jealousy, contentment, and the urge to remain independent.

Criticized as emotionally distant by many critics, Sandoval proves herself to be an honest songwriter here. Her sing-speak delivery and Roback's mellow slide-guitar are not so much obtuse affectations as windows inside of the band's mind: emotion devoid of histrionics.

- Inkblot Magazine