Jellyfish 1: Bellybutton

Nostalgia for the Summer of Love was barely over when kids too young to remember it started forming bands and making albums. These people came of age at a time when their biggest musical influences were the Partridge Family and the Banana Splits, and embraced as much day-glo plaid and corduroy they could find at thrift shops. For a couple years at the start of the ‘90s this scene was dominated by Jellyfish, four photogenic guys who probably wished they could’ve tried out for 1987’s New Monkees failure of a TV show. They could easily have been found guilty of completely ripping off Redd Kross if more people knew that band, and if their own music wasn’t so good.

Most of the music came from the collaboration of Andy Sturmer, standing drummer and lead vocalist with cheekbones, and Roger Manning, who mostly stuck to electric pianos onstage and shrugged his dreadlocks out of the way. Guitarist Jason Falkner played some of the bass on the band’s Bellybutton debut; the rest was handled by jazz boy John Patitucci or Steve MacDonald of the aforementioned Redd Kross. Once they started touring, Roger’s brother Chris took the bass gig in true Johnny Bravo fashion. All four went on the promo trail, and were interviewed wearing floppy hats while blowing soap bubbles and licking giant carnival lollipops.

Their image was a shoebox out of which the album spilled. After a MacGuffin of a churchy organ, the dark tale in “The Man I Used To Be” shuffles in all angry and tense. This is not power pop by the numbers, and neither is the harmonica solo from the guy who played on the Sanford And Son and Rockford Files themes—as well as “Good Vibrations”—but maybe that’s why they chose him. The hook-laden “That Is Why” is similarly edgy, but breaks free during the choruses for a better pop song. “The King Is Half-Undressed” is where most people would have heard them first, via a striking video that depicted the band members among pinwheels, hula hoops, and bubble gum, when objects weren’t flying in or out of the top of a magician’s hat. Even without that, the tune kicks, with lots of little touches, even if it does meander in the middle. “I Wanna Stay Home” veers on adult contemporary, but it still fits with everything else here. Footsteps lead into a room where a sumptuous piano ballad is getting support from a Hammond organ for a track we’d love to hear the rest of someday. Instead, it shifts abruptly to the swampy suburban horror of “She Still Loves Him”, wherein Jason gets to stretch. (His touches are terrific throughout the album.)

A lot of these songs were certainly made with the intention of sounding great on a stereo, but things heat up on side two. The frenetic “All I Want Is Everything” was made for the stage, complete with big crashing ending. It’s a fine Cheap Trick-style rocker, despite the keyboard trumpet lines. It segues quickly into the Beatlesque “Now She Knows She’s Wrong” (via harpsichord, bass, harmonies, and firebell right out of “Penny Lane”, but the resemblance stops there), which is also short enough to be a hit single but wasn’t. “Bedspring Kiss” is the furthest departure, incorporating bossa nova beats and strings, a Coral sitar, that harmonica again, and a cocktail interlude for five long minutes. Besides being super-catchy, “Baby’s Coming Back” is also notable for its video, wherein the boys briefly got to be their own Saturday morning cartoon. And if you still don’t hear the Partridge Family influence, check out the harpsichord tag over the coda. “Calling Sarah” pulls in lots of influences, particularly the Beach Boys and the Zombies in the choruses, for a strong finale. They display some wonderful detours and dynamics here, and just when it starts getting good, the album ends.

Bellybutton remains a unique grab-bag of toe-tapping pop-rock. In addition to the songwriting, much credit should go to co-producers Albhy Galuten, who’d gotten gold records with the Bee Gees, and Jack Joseph Puig, who would get lots of work throughout the ‘90s and beyond. And despite its obvious retro touches, it doesn’t sound dated. For the most part. (We’ve stated how visual image was a big part of their brand. The album’s cover built on a landscape most recently used by Prince, while the longbox—remember those?—went for a more literal approach. This last touch was not carried over when the album was expanded some 25 years later by adding live recordings plus a second disc full of fully fleshed-out demos.)

Jellyfish Bellybutton (1990)—3½
2015 Omnivore reissue: same as 1990, plus 26 extra tracks