3 out of 5

Label: Island

Producer: Patrick S. Keel

Tim DeLaughter has always had a slightly whiny tinge to his vocals and Tripping Daisy / Polyphonic have always had a degree of rainbows and sunshine to their music, but ‘Elastic Firecracker’ was undoubtedly grunge and all that would follow roped in so many excellent weirdo psychedelic influences that it pushed the Daisy lineage away from the peace-out-good-times-I-wear-my-hair-in-braids style of earliest Daisy.  Which is a good thing, because though ‘Bill’ starts out with some catchy rockers, that slight hippy influence just grows as the album continues on – imagine a less spastic Jane’s Addiction – concluding in a hidden track of stream of consciousness (maybe) dream talk over burbling drums and reverb guitar plunks.  It’s not a great ending.  Prior to all that, Daisy carves out a definite 90s tour of pop-rock but with enough straying from guitar and radio rock of that era to make their sound notable, if it does still glow mostly generic from a high level.  A lot of this notability has to do with DeLaughter, whose eager singing style – reviews of ‘Bill’ keep mentioning that his vocalsis heavily treated here, and you can hear that it’s put through several filters but it’s still DeLaughter – and understandable but slightly weird lyrical themes give the record an instant confidence that not many first time albums have.  ‘My Umbrella,’ ‘One Through Four,’ … these could be seen as classic Daisy rocker tracks, and it holds up for half the disc, until that hippy beat starts to become the prominent theme and not just a distant rumble.

I rarely rotate Bill in when I’m going through a Tripping Daisy phase since it is quite separate from the group’s other material.  However, it’s easy to follow the steps from here to ‘Firecracker,’ and there are catchy tracks, so it’s not like a total wash at all.  But thank goodness the band progressed from here.