Jellyfish 2: Spilt Milk

The Bellybutton album and videos certainly created a buzz for Jellyfish boys Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning. They got a chance to write some songs for the first Ringo Starr album in ten years, and were even courted briefly by Brian Wilson’s team. Certainly their label wanted the band to keep going, except that they weren’t really a band anymore. Chris Manning never wanted to be a bass player anyway, and Jason Falkner realized the other two weren’t going to let him do anything but play guitar at their direction, so he bolted.

Undaunted, the dynamic duo hunkered down in the studio in their Scooby Doo-inspired wardrobe with the guys who produced the debut, tapping Lyle Workman and the soon-to-be ubiquitous Jon Brion for the lead guitars and T-Bone Wolk to handle the better bass parts. The result was Spilt Milk, which doubled down on their quirky touches and daddy issues in the lyrics by piling on religious commentary and ceaseless references to cake frosting and other sugars, delivering a tour de force in album production. Some have suggested there is a rock opera in there, which may or may not be true; perhaps the song titles written in Alpha-Bits cereal in, yes, spilt milk on the back cover were intended to deflate any pomposity.

Whatever the real intention, we do seem to be dealing with a series of dreams. “Hush” perversely starts us off with a lullaby, the layered vocals an overt homage to Queen. The orchestral touches are misleading, as “Joining A Fan Club” jolts everyone awake with straightahead rock, the snide lyrics alluding to both pop stars and televangelists. Roger gets to open “Sebrina, Paste And Plato” (the latter word likely used to avoid paying the Play-Doh manufacturer any royalties), one of the most elaborate songs ever to depict grade school at its most garish, kinda like “Getting Better” filtered through the Muppets. The silliness abates with the sublime “New Mistake”, another master production that pulls out all the stops, complete with key change for the bridge and Harrisonian guitar solo, all the while relating a playlet about a surprise pregnancy that spans generations. “The Glutton Of Sympathy” most resembles the songs on Bellybutton, loaded as it is with haunting melodic phrases, and so does “The Ghost At Number One”. The heaviest track the Beach Boys never recorded, complete with a nod to “Cabin Essence” over the fade, it had a truly dark video to match, and predicted even more dead rock stars. While it was written back before the first album, “Bye, Bye, Bye” melds Oktoberfest with “Those Were The Days” by way of Supertramp. The best parts of the song are still the vocal motif used as the intro and after the instrumental break.

It’s back to loud angry rock (and more Queen references) with “All Is Forgiven”, its dense sound burying some very delicate musical lines, escalating into a wash of echo that abruptly cuts off with the next mood switch into “Russian Hill”. Based around a dreamy approach derived from Nick Drake, it occupies a similar palate-cleansing mood-changer slot as “Bedspring Kiss” on the last album, but it’s a much better song and arrangement, the pedal steel guitar the perfect touch. Then it’s off to Nilsson territory with “He’s My Best Friend”, a not-too-subtle ode to onanism with an even more overt steal in the title. It’s a joke that wears thin, but the majestic kiss-off “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” redeems it. (This is a good place to remind the listener that what sounds like a big band—anywhere on the album—was actually pieced together instrument by instrument and expertly mixed.) Another Harrisonian solo bookends the tune, to the point that we don’t always realize “Brighter Day” has started. The “Cabin Essence” banjo returns, in between carousel sounds and circus effects used to illustrate more of the horror than fun of life in the big top. Andy goosesteps toward the increasingly plodding denouement, and another Hollywood flourish brings us right back to where we came in on track one.

For the Split Milk tour, they drafted bass player Tim Smith to wear a hideous green corduroy suit with odd lapels and matching Prince Valiant haircut, while young Eric Dover was brought in to shred on guitar and leer at the girls in the front row. The stage was decked out with tinsel streamers like a high school dance and a working Lite-Brite displaying the band’s logo. Roger would occasionally come out from behind his rig to bash a guitar, particularly on their cover of Badfinger’s “No Matter What”. (Sadly, this was not included among the demos and live recordings added to the album’s eventual expansion.)

But it wasn’t enough to keep the band together, and rather attempt to make an even better record, Jellyfish dried up on the sand. Andy Sturmer was clearly happier making music than promoting it, and went on to a successful career working with Japanese musicians and scoring animated television, giving absolutely zero interviews in the time since. Roger Manning tried continuing as Imperial Drag with Eric Dover (who’d just finished a stint with Slash’s Snakepit) and eventually ended up in Beck’s touring band. While there he crossed paths with Jason Falkner, who was in the brief supergroup The Grays with Jon Brion before embarking on a prolific solo career of his own in between sessions (including one Paul McCartney album). Most recently, Manning, Dover, and Smith put out a series of three four-song EPs as The Lickerish Quartet, all released during Covid, and eventually compiled onto a CD in Japan, after which the project ended.

In the absence of a highly unlikely band reunion, Jellyfish endures as one of those bands who knew how to fill up both sides of a Maxell 90 with melodies that will stick in your brain. Some bands can barely fill one. (Those seeking even more from the band’s brief arc will want to look out for 2002’s mega-rare Fan Club box set, which includes much of the Omnivore bonuses and then some, the Radio Jellyfish compilation and Live At Bogart’s set, and the double-disc Stack-a-Tracks, which took the lead yet again from the Beach Boys by presenting predominantly instrumental mixes of both studio albums.)

Jellyfish Spilt Milk (1993)—3½
2015 Omnivore reissue: same as 1993, plus 25 extra tracks

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