Nearly completed album

By the end of 1996, the band had nearly completed the album, which they planned to release under the title Pure White Evil . Alexakis, however, was dissatisfied with the results and decided to work on more songs for the effort, including “One Hit Wonder” and the eventual title-track to the album, So Much for the Afterglow . The songs “The Swing” and “Otis Redding” were cut from the Pure White Evil Sessions and were not included on So Much for the Afterglow . Eventually they were released: the former on the soundtrack album for Scream 2 and the latter on Songs from an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile . So Much for the Afterglow was released in October 1997. The first two singles from the album, ” Everything to Everyone ” and ” I Will Buy You a New Life “, performed modestly, but helped to begin a slow build for the album, while “Local God” was featured in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in 1996 as well as on the soundtrack. The band completed a US tour at the end of the year and started 1998 with a tour of Australia.