Album Review- Too Much Joy

 One of the more unexpected reunions of the Covid era was Too Much Joy.

TMJ were one of my favorite bands of the Nineties. The band had a reputation in my college town (no surprise that they made an impact where they went. MTV would later extensively cover the band performing As Nasty As They Wanna Be in Broward County and the band’s Wikipedia reads as a series of pranks and stunts).

I actually first heard them on MTV as they crossed over with a cover of LL Cool J’s “That’s A Lie”. Son of Sam I Am was a fun romp hitting every note correct in the otherwise difficult world of joke rock.

1991’s Cereal Killers, the follow up, was much more traditional musically. It was peak 91- college rock defined in the vein of REM and the dbs and all that jangle pop afterwards- Connells, Judybats, Let’s Active, Game Theory and the like. (Like REM, TMJ also had their own KRS1 cameo) Whereas they were always going to be labeled joke rock and constantly compared to the Dead Milkmen (and other contemporary peers like Mojo Nixon and Dread Zeppelin), it’s actually a strangely accessible and very clever record.

I was not impressed with 92’s Mutiny- which was poised to follow up on their success and take them to the next level. Allmusic confers 4.5 stars on that record but it did not connect with me or a bigger audience.

I did eventually pick up 96s Finally- the return to the studio following being dropped from Giant Records. I consider it one of the worst records that I own.

Revisiting TMJ feels like reuniting with a high school friend. I undoubtedly listened to Cereal Killers as much or more than Out of Time.

It’s hard not to compare the band’s career to the Barenaked Ladies- a band with similar goofy ideas who ended up in arenas. I can think of a dozen reasons that one made it and the other didn’t, but it does speak to the unpredictability of things.

I have also recently pulled out Fluting On The Hump- another record I haven’t listened to and hardly given any thought to for 20+ years. With time in the mirror, there’s a lot of similarity in TMJ to King Missile, especially lyrically.

2021’s Mistakes Were Made is probably best explained as being exactly what it is. It’s audience should begin and end with diehard fans from the band’s heyday. That said, it’s a decent enough record- a fun record that is at least worth the time to listen, and then invoke a nostalgic dive into the bands other records.