Copyright 1993 The Irish Times   
The Irish Times
June 25, 1993, CITY EDITION
SECTION: SOUND & VISION; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 360 words
HEADLINE: DISC DRIVE - ROCK 
Jellyfish:"Spilt Milk"
BODY:

Virgin CD CUS 20
     A few hundred miles down the road San Francisco's Jellyfish
are on the same trip. but on this second album their question "is
this mere pastiche?" raises its ugly head. Their debut a couple of
years back was as fresh as The Posies' one above but this tim
e round it's presented more as a homage to the cornucopia of every
pop/rock act Jellyfish has ever admired.   They impersonate with
startling accuracy and imagination. For cross-references tile
Jellyfish trio transform themselves at will into Queen, 1OCC,
 Beach Boys, Cheap Trick, The Move and, of course, The Beatles.
They nick bits and pieces from classic Sixties pop albums and
commendably transpose them into their own writing, which oozes with
ideas and invention at every turn. The trouble is that all th
is feverish activity, undoubted skill and stylist invention is too
clever by half and there's a, danger of having to file them
alongside ELO . . . no, wait, that's too cruel.  ELO inexplicably
sold millions of records by sucking the lifeblood from the Bea
tles, pawning it as pop instead of the pap that it was.  ELO are
guilty: Jellyfish are clever-clever. If they could drop one of
those "clevers" they would be so much the first two. The pattern is
now quite predictable. His songs are brutally frank and per
ceptive, with some excellent melodies and intelligent, well-crafted
lyrics. There's a few very good more interesting. They have it in
them. When I saw them live in London a few years back, 1 never got
the feeling that there was any deeply-felt emotional c
entre to the music (they
even covered two Wings songs). But if enjoyment is all you want,
then we re talking 10 out of 10.