Jellyfish- Bellybutton
This album opens with a song about a deceased father who never knew his child. And that is weirder than anything else Jellyfish has ever done. This is Jellyfish after all, they made a song called “My Best Friend” about, well… every man’s best friend that’s not a dog. Why so serious? I have two hypotheses: one, there was something so important to them about the messages in this album that the band felt they needed to make them before anything else. The second might come down to a matter of recording. Spilt Milk started out from jam sessions with the band just playing around, trying to get the energy of a live set onto an album. I’ll bet that Bellybutton was made more in the studio than in Andy Sturmer’s living room.
This is an album about relationships, destructive ones to be precise. Whether it be a woman having an affair with a principal (“Now She Knows”) or a down and out drug addict finally convincing his ex to come back to him (“Baby’s Coming Back”) there’s no shortage of sadness and tragedy on display. The worst might be “She Still Loves Him” which is about an abusive relationship but sounds like the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” i.e. hopeful, but a little sad. It’s a off putting to say the least. And yet, compelling. This is still Jellyfish after all.
One disappointing aspect of this album is the lack of memorable and quotable lyrics. The one exception is on “Now She Knows” where the principal is called a “Walking monument to DNA.” I have only a vague idea about what that means, something about him spreading his DNA I suspect, but I like it anyway. Again I think it comes down to the seriousness of this album in comparison to the playfulness of what followed.
So when it comes to whether or not you should listen to this album there are some conditions. For one, this is a better album than Spilt Milk, it feels more like a whole than that album. But that’s still not enough to recommend it. It only changes the standards by which it needs to be judged. And in this case this album just doesn’t meet those standards, set by albums like Revolver and Al Green’s Greatest Hits. It just doesn’t come together enough. So to sum up, while Bellybutton is a better album than Spilt Milk I’m not sure I can recommend it more. I think you’ll like one more than the other and there’s going to be very little middle ground. So I’ll give it a 3/5. Go listen to Spilt Milk. If you like that listen to “The Man I Used To Be” and “That is Why” off this album and see if you want to check out the rest. One thing I will say is that more Jellyfish in your life can’t hurt, it’ll only help.