By: Maggie Cragar

I lay on the beach, sun-drunk and warm-skinned, my body draped across an old bath towel on the dense, muddy sands of Galveston beach. As Acetone’s 1997 self-titled album blasted through my headphones, I was lulled into a smiley haze; the band’s laid-back, leisurely sound enveloped me in a wave of pleasant lethargy, its plucking strings tinged with melancholy. The music was infused with elements of Americana, country, jazz, and slowcore, creating a sound that was as beautiful as it was rare.

Acetone’s sound stood in stark contrast to the grunge era that defined much of the ’90s. While bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains voiced raw frustration and dissatisfaction with the state of the world through unbridled intensity, Acetone pursued a subtler path, inviting listeners to read between the lines and sense the band’s emotions in restraint, atmosphere, and apathy rather than aggression.

The record perfectly captured the languid rhythm of the island where I grew up, a place where time seemed to stand still, engulfing its people in both a sense of permanent relaxation and an unspoken yearning for something more. It was a place where marijuana smoke curled lazily in the air, fostering complacency within static lives—an almost manufactured happiness, a drowsy surrender. The song “All The Time” itself seemed to mimic the breath of the tide, like the ocean’s lungs inhaling and exhaling in eternal rhythm.

Acetone remains one of the most underrated bands of the ‘90s; perhaps their greatness will never be fully appreciated by the masses, but they sure as hell will always matter to me.

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