5 out of 5

Label: Island

Produced by: Ted Nicely

You’re right: I never would have guessed the staying power of this album, given its suuuuper 90s music video of Kool-Aid tinted hair and loopy, overblown visuals.  Had you handed me Bill, Tripping Daisy’s preceding album, I would have smirked at the goddamned hippy vibe of the whole thing; the Blind Melon alterna-lite rock, and, uh, likely handed you the disc back, not filing Daisy in my brain as a band of note.  And bless the lord, there’s no way I could have predicted the masterpiece mash-up of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb – though in retrospect, my ears doth hear the layers on this album, as well, that would hint at that followup album’s approach.  But yeah, file this disc into your nostalgia bin with Toadies and Bush and others, and then do a little twirl and spin and accept that those bands are still kicking in some format or another – Daisy having sorta kinda morphed into Polyphonic Spree after the loss of a member – and that I still listen to all of them.  Because nostalgia is for suckers, and them albums were freaking good.

I Got A Girl is certainly a catchy single, though, bopped to forever buoyancy by Tim DeLaughter’s cheerfully surfer-esque vocal delivery and producer Ted Nicely’s punk leanings giving the track’s bursts of guitar the edge they need.  Every other song is also a catchy single, with the added benefit of Tim’s college-y lyrics on Bill having matured into the blend of oddball imagery and cynicism-enthused positivity that gave us anthems like Motivation and Trip Along and, uh, again, every song.  Sequencing is king, on Firecracker: the pop of our single gives way to the moody Piranha; the epic Prick winds down into the aptly-named squiggles of closer High; big splashes of sound breed catchy riffs.  Ebb and flow.  And mixed in to our alternative rock grit are these fades and non-genre touches, that splash of 70s that may have had DeLaughter in braids as a youth but ended up gifting his musical skills with a nice dose of surrealism…

I wouldn’t judge you for having sold your copy of this.  But I think if you revisit it, minusing out the nostalgia, you’ll be surprised at its quality, re-filing it with those other nostalgia bands you actually think are the bees-iest effing knees.