Jump Back, Baby

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Total Tracks: 16   Total Length: 48:49

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Douglas Wolk

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Douglas Wolk writes about pop music and comic books for Time, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired and elsewhere. He's the author of Reading Comics: How Gra...more »

05.19.09
One foot planted in psychedelic AM-radio pop and the other in avant-garde and experimental music
1996 | Label: Teenbeat / IODA

A New York institution for a decade, Uncle Wiggly were a spectacularly loose, weird, inventive trio of multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriters, with one foot planted in psychedelic AM-radio pop and the other in avant-garde and experimental music. This 1996 album leans more toward the former side — it's comprised of 16 terse, relatively orderly tunes, with lots of delicate little riffs; but chewy bits of dissonance, drone and heavy gnarl turn up all over. It's also got some of the spiffiest individual songs by all three members: try Wm. Berger's triumphantly monomaniacal processional "Rat's Rabbits," James Kavoussi's fevered Beefheartian singalong "Imbeciles," and Michael Anzalone's vindictive, Fall-inspired rocker "Yr. Hed."

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They Say All Music Guide

If Galaxie 500 had gotten together in Dunedin, New Zealand, instead of Cambridge, MA, they probably would have sounded something like Uncle Wiggly. This New York City trio’s mix of scrappy indie pop, delicate and nearly psychedelic reveries, and tightly-wound instrumentals should, by all logic, be too unfocused and eclectic to really work; but it’s these last two elements of the group’s sound that makes Uncle Wiggly unique. The choppy “Yr. Hed” sounds like any of a dozen Superchunk-influenced indie bands could have recorded it, while the dreamy “Mary’s Crayons” and the twisty loud-soft dynamics and Kiwi-style rush of the centerpiece track, “Purple Threat,” are far more substantial and unique. Jump Back, Baby has better production values and a cleaner sound than the lo-fi efforts that preceded it, but the trio’s songwriting and performance remain agreeably skewed, making the album an often intriguing mix of styles. – Stewart Mason

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