Self - Breakfast With Girls (1999)

It really makes the world seem Godless, soulless and completely fucking stupid when flaky pop groups like Len, Smash Mouth and Citizen King can pull of huge singles (even if they are only one-hit wonders) but once you add a little bit of depth to something equally as poppy and snappy and catchy, you lose that appeal. I might as well say right now that I knew nothing about Self when first hearing this record. I eventually learned that Matt Mahaffey plays most of the instruments and does most of the production and that Self started out his home recordings.

This record is their major label debut, and it sounds like it. The guitars are huge, the bass is deeeep and you can hear the crack of every drum hit. The layers and layers of keyboards, horns, strings, etc. can easily dismantle into clearly audible instruments which is not very common in such arrangement-intensive music. What I like most about Breakfast With Girls is that it's pretty tough to put this into a genre. There is so much going on in all of these songs, and what generally shines is that dichotomy of crisp electronic instruments and warm deep analog instruments recorded and played perfectly. My only real trouble with this record is that Mahaffey's voice is a bit of a hurdle to get over... at times the throaty rasp can sound better placed in a Color Me Badd song. The initial shininess of his voice is CRAZY overshadowed by the brilliant production choices on this record... the two-second hip-hop breakdown in "Kill the Barflies", the nintendo-esque keyboard riff in the chorus of the single "Meg Ryan", the horn samples in "What Are You Thinking?!" are all moments where you just wanna throw up your hands and shout "OH SHIT!" and rewind it a few times 'cause ya can't believe someone could think of shit that perfect.

There are a handful of bad decisions made on this record, but it was pointed out to me that those all had to do with Dreamworks who kept trying to bleed this record for a single, holding it for two years (which probably made it sound dated once released) and constantly sending Mahaffey back into the studio to record a "single" for the record. "Uno Girls" is so poppy it almost hurts to listen to, but in the context of "FUCK YOU RECORD LABEL, HERE'S A FUCKING POP SONG. FUCK YOU." it's a bit easier to swallow. There are also a few others that sound a little overwroughtly poppy for this record, and according to my friend Joel the Brunch EP has a bunch of songs that would have filled these spots way more appropriately, but those are now pretty out of print and hard to find. Oh well. Who would have thought a major label could fuck up an album!

--Jeff