This is a perfect replacement for the long awaited follow up to the Star Collector’s (who are no more it seems, unfortunately) debut from 1999.
You get all the same ingredients, including the Wilsonian harmonizing and heavy guitar crunch, all packed up in Jelly-grandeur. It seems that Joe likes to open his albums with a song predictably titled #1. It was the case with the Collector’s Songs For The Whole Family and he repeats it here with a Beatley psychedelicate semi-instro (later on the album, there’s even a tune about the possibility of him becoming one of ’em!).
Next up is Delta 88, starting out with an almost Del Shannon-like line before it becomes some sort of a heavy metal/power-pop mutant (in a good way !!!), a concept also revisited later in Tore Down.
Biggest Liar In The World is a classic Jellyfishin’ pocket symphony they never wrote, while This Is What You Get is like the Jellies again, doin’ an Elvis Costello tune, with the backups provided by the Beach Boys themselves.
Puzzle Peace is just plain pop perfection, a place he’s already been before while “star collecting” through the Window, then he goes all Wrong (well, not really of course, but I just couldn’t help it) with an Idle Racing melody, before having a Byrdsy Dream, about becoming a part of his own record collection (?!) and Sunshine is an audio omnibus starting out like a Lennonized ballad and then turning into a Rubinoozed power pop tune.
I Could Never Be w/U is like digging up a long lost, Spector-produced Supremes song and giving it a blue-eyed treatment and Ode To Uncle Jimmy will take you on a “sopwith camel” ride down the memory lane, explaining the reasons why little Joe started to rock’n’roll and also hoping that this one could do the same to some moderndaze kid, what Uncle Jimmy’s records did to him.
[Released by Not Lame 2003]
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