Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb
Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | July 7, 1998 | |||
Recorded | October–December 1997 | |||
Studio | Dreamland Recording Studios, West Hurley, N.Y. | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 57:10 | |||
Label | Island | |||
Producer | Eric Drew Feldman | |||
Tripping Daisy chronology | ||||
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Tripping Daisy studio album chronology | ||||
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Singles from Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb | ||||
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Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb is the third
A few months prior to the release of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Island Records' parent company was involved in a major corporate merger, which negatively affected the album's promotional campaign. The album failed to meet sales expectations; neither it nor its singles charted, resulting in Island Records ending its contract with Tripping Daisy two months after its release. Despite this, critics gave Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb mostly positive reviews, praising its improved musicianship and songwriting. The album is now regarded as the band's best work, and has been viewed as a precursor to Tim DeLaughter's next project The Polyphonic Spree.
Background
In June 1995, Tripping Daisy issued their second album I Am an Elastic Firecracker, which includes the hit single "I Got a Girl". The album was an moderate commercial success, reaching number 95 on the US Billboard 200 chart,[1] and also appeared on several charts worldwide. The band, however, faced numerous difficulties during this period; after a tour of the United States,[2] drummer Bryan Wakeland left the band in February 1996 due to creative differences. He was replaced by Mitch Marine, who performed with the band during a poorly received supporting tour with Def Leppard throughout 1996. In time, Marine proved to be an "even worse [musical] partnership" than Wakeland.[3][4] Sales of I Am an Elastic Firecracker were not as high as the band and Island Records hoped; it had sold 300,000 copies by 1998.[3][5]
Tripping Daisy, who were exhausted from touring for six-and-a-half years, went on a extended hiatus for most of 1997 and nearly split up.
Recording and production
Prior to the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Tripping Daisy sent a demo tape of their new material to producer Eric Drew Feldman. Tim DeLaughter became interested in working with Feldman after hearing his work producing Deus's album In a Bar, Under the Sea (1996): according to DeLaughter, "Sounds I heard on the Deus record were part of a world we wanted to be able to play in".[5][11] Although they did not expect Feldman to respond, he agreed to produce the band's next album.[5]
On October 7, 1997, the day on which the band were scheduled to travel to Dreamland Recording Studios in Hurley, New York, the band fired Mitch Marine. "Mitch's drums were loaded up in the trailer and we were getting ready to leave ... But we just couldn't go and make a record with a group of people who weren't right", DeLaughter said.[3][8] The band commenced recording at Dreamland with Feldman and engineer Andy Baker, who also worked on I Am an Elastic Firecracker, on October 10, 1997.[11] After spending two weeks residing in Woodstock—without a drummer—the band contacted UFOFU drummer Benjamin Curtis and asked him to play on the record.[3][11] Curtis arrived at Dreamland on October 19, 1997, and immediately started recording drum tracks for the album's partially completed songs.[3][11] Curtis related to the rest of the band better than he expected, and became an equal partner in the album's songwriting process.[3][8][11] Curtis found the experience recording with Tripping Daisy to be "really positive" and "a relief" following UFOFU's acrimonious breakup that year, and on November 4, 1997, he was made a permanent member of the band.[3][12] Tripping Daisy collectively wrote and recorded around 20 songs at Dreamland for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, five of which were written at the studio.[11] According to DeLaughter:
The way we came into the best sounds was by pure accident ... All mistakes were welcomed. We recorded this stuff live and just decided to step out and try lots of different things. When you have people who test the bounds of sound, this is what you get.[13]
Feldman gave Tripping Daisy an unprecedented amount of creative freedom during the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, and he encouraged the band to try out new ideas in the studio. According to DeLaughter; "He likes to experiment and then go into the experiment even further, and before you know it, you're crafting [an innovative] record ... His whole thing was, 'Just make sure I have plenty of tape so you can do anything you want to and there's no pressure' ".
Island Records did not interfere with the recording sessions of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb. Previously, during the recording of I Am an Elastic Firecracker, the company's A&R representatives pressured Tripping Daisy to produce more commercial-sounding material, likely in response to the poor performance of the label's 1993 re-release of the band's debut album Bill, which was expected to be an immediate success.[3] DeLaughter attributed Island's lack of interference to the departures of A&R executive Rose Noone and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell in 1996 and 1997, respectively.[3] DeLaughter said:
We had nobody from the record company disturbing us ... It was basically, 'Here's the money, make a record, we won't bug you'. We were a victim of circumstances that out [sic] in our favor. It's the only way to make a record: no one to fuck with you. There was no second-guessing.[5]
Recording sessions for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb concluded in December 1997 and the band returned to Texas just before Christmas.[11] Feldman and Baker mixed the album at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas in January 1998.[14] The band was extremely proud of the album; bassist Mark Pirro called it "the best we've been so far" and DeLaughter said he had "finally made a record and been a part of something that [he'd] wanted to achieve for a long time".[5][6]
Composition
Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb has been described as alternative rock,[16] art rock[17][9] and neo-psychedelia.[18][19] The Austin Chronicle labeled the album "space pop",[20] whilst AllMusic described it as "[balancing] punk-pop with art-rock".[16] The album is a departure from the grunge-oriented sound of Tripping Daisy's previous releases Bill and I Am an Elastic Firecracker; it embraces a variety of musical styles whilst displaying pop music influences throughout.[15] The album's sound was compared to the works of bands such as Jane's Addiction,[17][18] Built to Spill,[21] and The Flaming Lips,[18][19][22] as well as to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[18][23]
DeLaughter envisioned Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as an artistic statement that challenged and rejected modern-day radio, which he saw as "formulated and predictable", and the pressures from Island the band had faced with I Am an Elastic Firecracker.[24] He also considered Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb to be "the most honest record coming out in the last few years",[24] and felt the album's openly flawed nature gives it a quality of "truth".[8] Island's then-CEO Davitt Sigerson described Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as "more epic and more emotionally connecting" than Tripping Daisy's earlier works.[3]
FMQB described "Waited a Light Year" as "an adventurous pocket symphony" that "uses three distinctly different musical movements that culminate in a blinding wall of noise".[25] "Sonic Bloom" is a psychedelic pop ballad about "the joy and wide-eyed amazement of finding, falling and feeling love".[17][26] Some of the album's tracks exhibit a punk rock influence; "Mechanical Breakdown" is a "neo-futuristic" pop-punk anthem,[13][17][15] while "8 Ladies" features off-kilter, post-punk riffs in the vein of Shudder to Think.[17] "Our Drive to the Sun / Can a Man Mark It?" and "Tiny Men" echo the band's early, melodic sound found on Bill.[11] The album's final track "Indian Poker Pt. 2 & 3" is a combined cover of the songs "Indian Poker (Part 2)" and "Indian Poker (Part 3)" by the indie rock band Brainiac, from their album Hissing Prigs in Static Couture (1996); the track was dedicated to Brainiac's lead singer Timmy Taylor, who was killed in a car accident in May 1997, in Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb's liner notes.[14][27]
Tim DeLaughter's lyrics were described as dense and often cryptic;
Tim DeLaughter derived the album's title from a greatest hits record by the Pilgrim Travelers he found in the studio; he said: "One of the songs on there was 'Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb'. Something went through me like a bolt of lightening, and we were all saying, 'That's It! That says everything we're feeling about this record.' "[5] DeLaughter also chose the album's title because it "meant something as broad as my thoughts, to embrace this record that I thought was heavy".[5] The album was originally titled Guts but the title was changed after it was discovered fellow Island Records artist John Cale had released a compilation album under that name in 1977.[5]
Release and promotion
Executives at Island Records responded enthusiastically to Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb when presented with the album. According to Tim DeLaughter: "When we brought this record in to them, they were completely flabbergasted—floored! We played it for him, for Davitt [Sigerson], and he was like, 'My God! We had no idea you were doing this.' "
Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb was released in the United States and Canada on July 7, 1998, and in the United Kingdom on July 27.
Around a month before the album's release, Island's parent company PolyGram was purchased by the beverage giant Seagram for US$10.6 billion.[41] To finance the acquisition and cut costs, Seagram decided to merge PolyGram into Universal Music Group, resulting in the loss of 3,000 PolyGram jobs.[31] DeLaughter believed employees of Island Records at the time were more concerned about keeping their jobs than promoting music, and thus the album was not and could not be effectively promoted.[31] In September 1998, two months after the album's release, Island chose not to renew its contract with Tripping Daisy.[31][39]
Tripping Daisy toured the US and Canada in support of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb during the fall of 1998.[3] Due to the studio-based nature of the songs, the band had some difficulties translating the album's material to live shows.[13] The band played to significantly smaller audiences during the tour;[42] a Chicago Tribune review of one of the band's shows on September 23, 1998, noted only 200 people had attended the band's show at Metro Chicago, which had a maximum capacity of 1,400.[43] The GW Hatchet reviewed a show at Black Cat in Washington, D.C., and reported an audience of only forty people.[44] After the tour's conclusion, the band returned to the studio to record demos for a new album.[31][45][46]
Critical reception
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
The Boston Phoenix | [18] |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [47] |
Kerrang! | [17] |
Lancashire Telegraph | 6/10[23] |
Melody Maker | [22] |
Pitchfork | 8.3/10[21] |
Upon its release, Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb received mostly positive reviews from critics.
However, some critics found the album inconsistent in its quality and approach.
Legacy
Despite its commercial failure, Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb was "one of the most acclaimed albums of 1998", according to
Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb has been retrospectively viewed as a precursor to Tim DeLaughter's subsequent endeavors with the choral rock band The Polyphonic Spree, which he formed following Tripping Daisy's disbandment in 1999. CMJ's Doug Levy said that throughout Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, "you can actually hear the Polyphonic Spree being born in DeLaughter's head",[57] whilst The Houston Chronicle identified "the beginning stages of the Polyphonic Spree" on the album.[40] In 2003, DeLaughter told MTV News:
If I look at why I liked effects on my vocals [on Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb], it's because I always wanted to sound like there was more than just myself singing ... I could glide on the melody a lot better. So when I was going through that at the time, I wished there were 10 of me, 10 voices singing as one. I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to have a band like that?'[51]
After its initial issue, Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb was both out of print and unavailable on music streaming services until early 2017, when Island Records made the album available for streaming after Tripping Daisy made news of their reunion public in January of that year.[54][61] In November 2020, the album was reissued on double vinyl for the first time through the band's own record label Good Records, which was formed shortly after Island ended its contract with the band.[3][62][63][64] Tripping Daisy had planned to issue the album on vinyl around the time of its release but this was indefinitely delayed due to the UMG-PolyGram merger.[65]
Track listing
All lyrics are written Tim DeLaughter; all music is composed by Tripping Daisy, except where noted.[14]
No. | Title | Lyrics | Music | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Field Day Jitters" | 4:09 | ||
2. | "Waited a Light Year" | 6:00 | ||
3. | "Sonic Bloom" | 3:39 | ||
4. | "Bandaids™ for Hire" |
| 2:38 | |
5. | "Mechanical Breakdown" | 3:18 | ||
6. | "Your Socks Have No Name" | 2:31 | ||
7. | "Geeareohdoubleyou" ("G.R.O.W") | 3:47 | ||
8. | "New Plains Medicine" | 2:01 | ||
9. | "Our Drive to the Sun / Can a Man Mark It?" | 5:27 | ||
10. | "Human Contact" | 5:37 | ||
11. | "Pillar" | 3:00 | ||
12. | "8 Ladies" | 3:19 | ||
13. | "About the Movies" | 5:06 | ||
14. | "Tiny Men" | 3:25 | ||
15. | "Indian Poker Pt. 2 & 3" (Brainiac cover) | Tim Taylor | Tim Taylor | 3:06 |
Total length: | 57:10 |
Notes
- Michael Dodds is credited for the song title of "New Plains Medicine".[14]
Personnel
Personnel per liner notes.[14][63]
Tripping Daisy
Additional musicians
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Production
Artwork
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Release history
Reigon | Label | Format | Date | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
United States | Island Records |
|
July 7, 1998 | [3] |
Canada | ||||
United Kingdom | July 27, 1998 | [32] | ||
Various | Good Records | 2xLP | November 27, 2020 | [64] |
Cassette | March 15, 2021 | [63] |
References
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{{cite web}}
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{{cite web}}
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External links
- Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb on YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)