Sometimes when a band calls its album
Musick to Insult Your Intelligence By and hides the phrase "Once Again You Gave Us Money" inside the CD jewel case, you can only wonder if the line between humor and unexpected candor has been purposefully crossed. After 15 years in the "Where Are They Now" file,
Green Jelly, the heavy metal puppet show and video production team who scored a surprise hit with "Three Little Pigs" in 1993, have suddenly re-emerged with their third album, and it's as if they never went away. Trouble is, that's something short of a compliment;
Green Jelly have not changed all that much with the passage of time, but they also haven't noticeably improved, and their jokes are not one iota smarter or funnier after a decade and a half in the woodshed. (If you don't have anything better as a punch line for your album than "I've got blisters on my scrotum," you really need to go back to the drawing board.) The musicians on this album (curiously uncredited) are more than competent, and they can play the standard-issue heavy metal changes with obvious skill and professional flash, but the music doesn't sound especially inspired, and the tunes are ultimately frameworks for lyrics that don't deliver the comic goods. (At least when
Weird Al does songs about food and nerds, you know when and why you should laugh.) Perhaps, in the grand tradition of
GWAR. this is marginal music that's the basis for an epochal live show, but the sad truth is that you can't see that show on this CD (maybe they should have waited to put out a DVD), and without the big puppets and goofy stagecraft, this is 41 minutes of music that goes nowhere in particular and doesn't show any particular flair along the way. Perhaps
Green Jelly should start work on a follow-up called We Wrote Better Songs This Time...that one might just be ready for market in another 15 years.