MANIC POP THRILL kicks ass. It's like a zillion bees on cheap speed crammed into an electric guitar. Except for where it slows down to some pretty sugary sweet pop.And then BABBLE gets even better. More variety, energy displaced in a wider variety of ways, periodic bouts of dark moodiness, dance rock, defiant anger...... Probably their best album.
A handful of singles during this period, too, and all of them pretty tasty.
Not sure what happened after that. Too many guys writing the songs individually, it seems to me. I have no problem with albums that lack cohesiveness, but END OF THE MILLENNIUM PSYCHOSIS BLUES and CHEMICRAZY just seem to thrash about and meander and ultimately flounder under the weight of their own uncertainty. If the songs were all topnotch exercises in whatever style the band was attempting, that would help, but a lot of this stuff is pretty faceless. FIREPROOF sounded kind of tired to me, which is a possibility as the band slogged around endlessly, but could never rise above their cult status. That's gotta wear you down.
TPE is one of those bands where people like to say "Man, if they were around today, they'd be HUGE", but they wouldn't. They were out of step with their times, definitely, and they had a US label for a few albums that didn't seem overly interested in pushing them, and so eventually they just ran out of steam without ever gaining more than a tiny toehold with record buyers.
Pick up those first two records, tho. The latest CD reissues have bonus tracks, but the original albums themselves are the truest testaments to how passionate and vital this band was.
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