The rock landscape is littered with immensely talented bands who, for some reason or another, never got off the ground. And I’ll bet virtually no one has heard of about 98% of them. The remaining 2% are those whose talent wasn’t recognized until it was too late, or the band suffered a tragedy that brought the group to an untimely end (or in the case of Badfinger, a whole series of tragedies).
One such band was the visually and sonically vivid power-pop band of the early nineties, Jellyfish. With only two full-length albums left behind for us to ponder, Jellyfish as was tantalizingly close to perfecting dense, clever and hook-filled pop-rock than any band who has emerged since about two decades before them, and possibly, no one has quite gotten any closer since. XTC excepted, of course.
The band coalesced quickly in 1990, with lead singer/drummer Andy Sturmer, keyboardist Roger Manning and guitarist/bassist Jason Falkner. Roger’s brother Chris served as their bassist for live shows. Before the year was up, Jellyfish premiered with Bellybutton, which spawned a modest Billboard 100 hit with “Baby’s Coming Back.” A couple of other singles charted on the Modern Rock Chart. The album introduced Jellyfish as a band that revived the hooks and harmonies of seventies acts like Badfinger, Paul McCartney and Wings, Big Star, as well as Squeeze. It was nevertheless an album more exciting by the promise of something better to come rather than the promise fulfilled.
Around 1992, Jason Falkner and Chris Manning left the band, leaving only the principal songwriters Sturmer and Roger Manning left to pick up the pieces and fulfill that vast potential. Fulfill it they did. Recruiting Tim Smith as the new bassist and employing Jon Brion and Lyle Workman for studio guitar work, Falkner and Manning got to work on a meticulously crafted, soniferous carnival ride that not only flashed those aforementioned influences, they painted the town a bright red with them. Fully understanding the impatience of record companies and the need to produce a winner, Jellyfish went for broke on their sophomore effort, Spilt Milk.
“Going for broke” meant nothing was spared in the production department. Strings and horns and various odd instruments and sound effects were used, amidst the more common tools of rock. Overdubbing and elaborate song arrangements became the order of the day in the studio. When it was all done, the resulting album left a sonic footprint several times the size of Bellybutton. All topped off by sly, intelligent lyrics and big ol’ hooks.
The first two cuts could have stood in as another Queen anthemic one-two punch to follow up “We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions”: “Hush” is bathed in rich a cappella harmonies that could have made Brian Wilson feel a little threatened, while “Joining A Fan Club” continues the operatic backing vocals and reintroduces the abandoned concept of juxtaposing pitbull guitars against a piano and even well-placed string accompaniment. On top of all that, an unabashedly rock ‘n’ roll instrumental break is thrown in.
“Sebrina, Paste And Plato” recalls the child-like wonder of the psychedelic music, a mélange that jerks the listener among strains inspired by the Beatles’ “Penny Lane,” “Getting Better” and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” “The Ghost at Number One,” (video below) which should have charted much better than it did, pulls in a Thin Lizzy double-guitar attack with and a heavenly Beach Boys passage in a song that apparently describes a self-destructive, self-absorbed pop superstar (“How does it feel to be the only one?/How does it feel to be the only one that knows that you’re right?/How does it feel to be a chalkline dollar sign?/How does it feel up at the address all the widows write?”).
The bag of tricks isn’t nearly exhausted after these songs, either. “Bye Bye Bye” marries old polka with smart popcraft. The bass line is held down by a tuba and the song sports a sing-song chorus that’s baroque in a charming way. The jangly fractured love song “New Mistake” is fueled by a slippery syncopated rhythm, a Supertramped bridge and a George Harrison-styled guitar solo. “Russian Hill” with its dreamy, sparse character conjures up the Moody Blues, jazz and country all at once. “He’s My Best Friend” reveals Jellyfish’s humor at its best; it’s a song about…well, just read the lyrics for yourself. “All Is Forgiven” visits Queen territory again, with a raging vengeance.
For all of the instruments, the flourishes, the multi-multi-tracked harmonies thrown into this bisque of the bountiful it rarely sounds weighted down. Since impersonal touches like programming, sampling and synthesizers and drum machines didn’t make it into the script, this album sounds remarkably fresh to the present day. All the best pop-rock albums do.
Spilt Milk was a huge leap forward the artistry of Jellyfish, but didn’t take the band to the next level in popularity. So what happened? The easiest explanation can be found in the major musical development between Bellybutton and this one: the nationwide emergence of grunge and alternative rock, famously symbolized by Nirvana’s Nevermind knocking Michael Jackson‘s Dangerous off the top spot in the album charts in 1992. By the time Spilt Milk had emerged, it seems no one was interested in rock that sounded like it was painstakingly constructed, and that is exactly what Jellyfish had done. The right place at the wrong time, indeed.
The disappointment in sales could have only exacerbated the artistic friction between Manning and Sturmer, and after their 1994 tour ended, the band called it quits. Fifteen years later, there doesn’t appear to be any prospect of Manning and Sturmer resurrecting Jellyfish, as the various former bandmembers have eventually contented themselves plying their trade in less visible roles as producers, songwriters-for-hire and sessions players (although Manning has made a couple of records recently).
For all the posthumous glory heaped on Jellyfish’s pair of records, especially Spilt Milk, these weren’t very revolutionary at all; they synthesized their influences well and modernized them, but didn’t cover new musical ground. Their real accomplishment was that Spilt Milk reintroduced the limitless possibilities that resided inside rock, first brought forward by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd in the sixties and expanded on in the following decade. Their recycling of that noble idea caught on with more successful acts later in the nineties as a growing section of the music-listening public craved again for rock that offered more than three dirty chords and a dark outlook on life. They paved the way for Ben Folds Five, The Merrymakers, and The Hutchinsons, and arguably, just about any power-pop combo that’s emerged in the aughts, too.
The post-mortem discovery and adulation of this shiny, power-pop nugget has gotten many joining the Jellyfish fan club. If only they had done so back in ’93-’94, we may have been discussing this album as the first in an amazing string of records by a long-running act that’s become a major force in rock. We’ll have to settle instead for a very nice one shot deal.
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Thanks for this post. I always enjoy reading about Jellyfish.
I wanted to disagree with you, and then maybe tell you something you might not have known. On the former, I think Bellybutton is the far superior record. I'm enjoying Spilt Milk more these days than I did before, but Bellybutton seems more organic and more powerful; it really connects (with me, obviously; your mileage might and does seem to vary). I want to chalk this up to the departure of Jason Falkner, who I love like a brother who doesn't know I exist, but he apparently didn't write, really, for Bellybutton, which is a big reason he left the band. His playing is terrific, but really I just think the songs were stronger on Bellybutton. Spilt Milk is maybe more derivative or gimmicky somehow.
When you wrapped up your post, you didn't mention Falkner's solo career. If that was an omission, just ignore me, but if you weren't aware of it, well, any Jellyfish fan is going to want to catch up with his catalog. Start at the beginning, as his first — Presents Author Unknown — is my favorite, and he's sort of moved away from that since, or moved on, at least. Also, while you note there's no Sturmer-Manning reunion pending, Falkner and Manning teamed on the TV Eyes album that was released by a Japanese label; if you didn't already know if it, you can find reference to it on wikipedia and amazon, to start.
I intentionally left off much mention of the post-Jellyfish careers of the various band members simply because my article was already getting kind of long. I could have devoted an entire article just on what the Mannings, Falkner, Sturmer, et. al, have been doing since Jellyfish broke up. I threw in the reference to Manning's solo records mainly because his "Catnip Dynamite" came out just a few months ago (and it does sound a bit like Split Milk, btw).
As for Bellybutton, I usually go for the more organic records, too. Split Milk is an exception, because the execution was so spot on and the songwriting a little tighter, IMO. But certainly, both albums are worth having.
Thanks for the comment.
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