By 1993, the Dead Milkmen were at an impasse. Their previous record, 1992’s Soul Rotation had bombed hard despite being a good disc and the band were dropped by Hollywood. Undeterred, they kept touring and began recording in earnest in a Boston studio. The tapes were shopped around and Hollywood decided to pick it up. Weirdly, they released the album with hardly any kind of promotion: no single, no video, nothing really.
The result is one of the strangest discs the band ever put out. 28 minutes long with hardly any traces of punk rock to be found. Some diehards love this album and say it’s one of their best; I unfortunately am not one of them. Despite the album being available digitally for a while, I had long wanted to track down a physical copy. Thanks to a fellow fan in a FB group, a pristine copy was sent to me from Texas last week and well….
The album’s opening track “Leggo My Ego” is a nice blast of rock to kick off the disc and one’s hopes are up that the whole album will continue along this path. But the next track “I Dream Of Jesus” is a straight knock-off of King Missile and let’s face it even in 1993, we didn’t need two variations of King Missile. Some fans really love this track, but I just cannot get with it and it certainly hasn’t held up 30 years later.
A lot of the album is sung by guitarist Joe Jack Talcum and that leads to a more melancholic feel than previous records. “Not Crazy” is the perfect example; a great song but not one normally heard on a Milkmen record. Other Joe songs like “Nobody Falls Like” and “I Started To Hate You” are more standard tracks that feel right at home for the fans. “Let’s Get The Baby High” on the other hand just sucks. A bad ripoff of Ween with distorted vocals; it’s just the worst and might be one of the all-time lamest songs the band ever did.
The album’s closing tracks with the best titles, “The Infant Of Prague Customized My Van” and “The Woman Who Was Also A Mongoose” are definite highlights as the band experiment with harmonica, tin whistle and some slower melodies. These songs really work and highlight a band that was trying to change things up and not be stuck in a novelty skate punk scene.
Unfortunately, due to lack of any kind of promotion from the label, the record did worse than the previous and the band were sent on their way by Hollywood once and for all. One more album and the band was done by 1995. They later reunited, but this stands as one of the most head-scratching discs in their lauded catalogue.
