Copyright 1993 The Time Inc. Magazine Company   
People
April 26, 1993
SECTION: PICKS & PANS; Song; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 1165 words
BYLINE: ERIC LEVIN, TONY SCHERMAN, AMY LINDEN, DAVID GROGAN
BODY:

SPILT MILK
Jellyfish
     The deep-sided sandbox of two talented 27-year-old San
Franciscans, Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning, Jellyfish is a band
driven by an ebullient love of pop and rock's whole gonzo arsenal
of expression and a determination to craft every song into a fully
l
oaded, to-the-max, minimasterpiece. Spilt Milk, the band's second
album, gives you flickers of Queen, Squeeze, Supertramp, bubblegum
and the Beatles, to name a few, but the influences all get
refracted in the fun-house mirror of Jellyfish's nonstop celebr
ation of melody, vocal harmony and conceptual lavishness.
     Spilt Milk is hard to summarize because its 12 cuts are so
varied, yet it all hangs together. The album opens with "Hush," a
lullaby of almost Disneyesque intensity, sung in multipart harmony,
then moves into a swashbuckling arena-rock fantasy about teen
age adulation, "Joining a Fan Club." Even within songs, tempos and
rhythms change, the band shades from a whisper to a wall of sound.
Chimes toll over a plinking banjo for a few key bars. Tubas, alto
flutes and other instruments sweep in as needed. While 
digital sampling turns rap into a recycling center for old riffs,
and drum machines make dance floors robotic, Jellyfish goes for
epic scale and soaring emotion on every cut and parachutes to
safety each time, bobbing on the waves like a jellyfish, and st
inging like one too. (Charisma)  -- ERIC LEVIN 

DON'T TOAST THEM WITH A GLASS OF SAND
     Are Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning Jellyfish or ostriches?
They recorded Spilt Milk in Los Angeles last year during and after
the riots, yet it is one of the most bounteous, fervid and
rage-free rock records in years. "We see the same world everybody
els
e sees, but we're optimists," says Sturmer, the drummer, guitarist
and lead singer who has been best friends with pianist, guitarist
and vocalist Manning since 1980, their freshman year at Amador High
School in Pleasanton, Calif. "Music is the most wonder
ful invention for us to cope with what's going on. If you look at
the world as just a terrible arid desert, you'll be crushed. Since
you must walk through, why not take a big sip of water instead of
a glass of sand? I don't need lyrics telling me who to r
oot for politically or that we've blown it as a society. For us,
it's more how you deal with individual emotions."
     Plenty of those sloshed around during the making of Spilt
Milk. "We had a couple of members leave the band after Bellybutton
[Jellyfish's praised 1990 debut album], and we had lots of hassles
trying to put the record together. We thought it sounded good,
 but it also took too long and cost too much. But we couldn't cry
over spilt milk -- hence the title. We just had to have tunnel
vision and finish this monster we heard in our heads. We're
overachievers in an underachieving world. So we worked 14 hours a 
day, six days a week, for six months to finish it. Once I literally
passed out doing a vocal and woke up in the next room. Making this
record was like that Army commercial: 'The toughest job you'll ever
love.'" -- ERIC LEVIN

GRAPHIC: Picture 1, JELLYFISH "We have a very grand concept of what
we're trying to do," says Andy Sturmer (front) with co-leader Roger
Manning and bandmates Eric Dover and Tim Smith. descBlack and
white: Members of the group Jellyfish., PETER DARLEY/MILL
ER;