5 out of 5

Label: St. Ives

Produced by: Mytch Harris

Ah, Jorma Whittaker, I wish I could quit you.

With Marmoset, Jorma Whittaker’s output would prove a source of alternating wonder and frustration, the group’s lo-fi pop jangle of immense appeal, playing into a kind of early Pavement-y anti-catchiness but then almost purposefully without that group’s somewhat intelligentsia collegiate underpinnings – Marmoset was willing to keep it simple. And that was the wonder: the group could be fun, and silly, and through that some meaning would wiggle through, made more impactful the more you revisited it. But the frustration was the band’s own version of indulgence, tippling the silly into dumb or juvenile, and while that stuff had sing-song value, the balance wasn’t always intact, occasionally infecting even the un-dumb stuff with more of a sense of randomness and avoidance than felt “natural” in other incarnations.

It’s complicated, which seems weird for a band that could often be all about nonsense.

With his first solo album, Jorma seemed to find more of a sense of focus, or a willingness to focus, and I found that incredibly rewarding. This did carry over to the return to Marmoset, but the band was still, understandably, its own entity, and either out of expectation or habit, the alternating vibes mentioned above remained.

“Movie Bare” was brought together as something of a backing band for Jorma for his second solo album after Marmoset seemed to conclude, and spans over a tough time of composing and recording that found longtime producer LonPaul Ellrich passing away. How that might’ve shaped the songs themselves is something I’m not sure I’m informed enough to speculate upon (and isn’t background I was aware of when first hearing this), but I was admittedly initially dismayed to find that Jorma was seemingly again veering more toward nonsense territory on Lollipop Gold, with lyrics veering between sad sounding but silly tales (Letterbox may initially be about a regretful letter correspondence, but no, it’s about paying bills being annoying) and questionable WTFness (not even sure I can poke at a song like ‘Potato Nurse Hermaphrodite’).

However, I find myself getting Whittaker’s earworms stuck in my head long beyond playback, and in a deeper fashion than I was used to from Marmoset. He – and the group – were always skilled at coming up with charming ditties, but the kind of offhand approach also made them somewhat ephemeral, and / or tunes that were easy enough, in memory, to attribute to something else. And Lollipop Gold did not fall into that category: these tracks stuck with me. Maybe not emotionally, but they hit at that deep level which I think music is uniquely capable of reaching.

On closer inspection, I think two things are going on here: that while the content might be surface level silly, it taps more into the original Marmoset zeitgeist of top-of-mind than had been achieved in a while, and then is furthermore allowed room to iterate on that instead of dodge away for another hook – Jorma blending the potentially more serious aspirations of his debut solo album with the confidence of accepting experimentation. Secondly: the band. Song for song, these are just some of the most catchy, and unassumingly dense set of compositions with which Whittaker has been associated. Even the simple ditties have a fair amount of depth; even an intro track like the B-side title song doesn’t come across as a toss off to fill time, but rather a rightfully selected entry to complete the album’s journey through weird thoughts and feelings.

Drummer Mytch Harris, taking over on production, is also key to this, maintaining Ellrich’s raw but rich style, balancing the many instrumental elements sneaked into this, but maintaining a kind of sharpness that works with Jorma’s mix; the whole band play a bit more tightly than Marmoset overall, which vibes with the approach.

It seems fitting that this kind of landmark work in Jorma’s already impressive output would also be one of his most elusive releases – the article I’ve linked to above is one of the few I can find on the album, and its initial pressing was only 250 copies. They’re easy enough to purchase used, I suppose, and streams are up on spotify and such, but this feels somewhat scrubbed if you’re just sifting through Jorma’s more relatively in-print stuff. But if you’re a fan of Marmoset, it’s a must, and if you ever found yourself wishing for something a bit more focused than that – this is gold. (…of the lollipop variety as well, I guess?)