If you grew up watching Nickelodeon in the 1990s, you remember “The Adventures of Pete & Pete.” The show, which ran for three seasons between December 1993 and May 1996, was an oddly surrealistic piece of situational comedy focusing on a teenager and his pre-teen brother, both named Pete. The series’s fictional Wellsville is an exaggerated chunk of Americana where kids have personal superheroes, families compete in impromptu road trip races and teachers are either benevolent and dim-witted or bloodthirsty and domineering.
Looking back, “Pete & Pete” had a weirdly “indie” aesthetic for a series aimed at children and teens. Many of the show’s recurring characters were portrayed by semi-underground music mainstays like Iggy Pop — who played a very young Michelle Trachtenberg’s dad — and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe as second-rate ice cream man named Captain Scrummy. Independent film regular Steve Buscemi was a recurring character as well, as the father of Big Pete’s girlfriend, Ellen.
It should then be no surprise that, needing a theme song and score, the show’s creators approached Mark Mulcahy, leader of college radio veterans Miracle Legion. Mulcahy liked the idea, but Ray Neal, Miracle Legion’s guitarist, did not. The new three-piece side project was named Polaris, and Mulcahy took the job. That’s Polaris you see jumping around the yard at the beginning of each episode in their plaid flannel, Mulcahy joyously mumbling the lyrics and shouting “ai yai yai yai!”
That theme song is “Hey Sandy,” and it opens Music from the Adventures of Pete & Pete, the only collection of Polaris’s music aside from the cassette single that used to come in boxes of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Comprised of re-recordings made in 1999, it chronicles the brief existence of this made-to-order side project. Miracle Legion constantly received comparisons to R.E.M., and the similarity is apparent here. Most of the lyrics are unintelligible, as Mulcahy loves to sing in a Stipe-style mushmouth. One quickly recognizes the lyrics are of secondary importance in this record. When they come out, they’re suitably nostalgic and wide-eyed. Mulcahy distinguishes himself from his more famous contemporary by singing in a bright, slightly nasal tenor that has a lot in common with Live’s Ed Kowalczyk. He sounds younger than Michael Stipe ever has.
It’s in its hooks and wonderful jangle-pop that Music from the Adventures of Pete & Pete really shines, and where Polaris’s/Miracle Legion’s other influences really show. The lone bass line in “Ashamed of the Story I Told” is very Pixies, as is the vaguely ska guitar in “Summerbaby,” a song which, incidentally, becomes Little Pete’s favorite in the episode “A Hard Day’s Pete” after he briefly witnesses Polaris jamming in a garage.
There is little, if any, music on this record that could be called “innovative.” Polaris was a one-off gig; the members preferred to experiment with their main project. But it is this very lack of experimentation that makes Music from the Adventures of Pete & Pete so essential. The songs all sound like any decent pop group of the early ’90s playing with nothing to lose. This album would never be a part of Miracle Legion’s discography, which allowed Mulcahy and company to simply write a collection of no-pressure pop songs. There are standouts, to be sure — “Waiting for October” is incredibly fun and upbeat, and, of course, “Hey Sandy” is itself a pop gem — but they’re not the point. For a ’90s kid, this record sounds like childhood.