REVIEW: Self, Breakfast with Girls (DreamWorks)
- Scott Slonaker
It seems that DreamWorks Records is presently enamored with a variety of "mad scientist"-type artists such as Blinker the Star and eels. Of course, Pet Sounds-style pop fusion is all the rage these days- even grunge belter Chris Cornell is drenching his arrangements in strings and keyboards. Self, which consists of Matt Mahaffey and some friends, can largely avoid accusations of trendiness. Mahaffey's first major release, 1995's Subliminal Plastic Motives, actually predates Odelay. Breakfast with Girls is Self's second major-label album.
In a nutshell, Self's music is a perfect hybrid of Weezer and Beck. Cut-and-paste nerdy-power-pop-rock may be tough to imagine, but the formula is fine-blame the execution in spots. Mahaffey has a great ear for pop hooks; it's just that sometimes he buries them beneath layers of same-sounding hip-hop beats, oversize guitars, and keyboards. The first two tracks, "The End of it All" and "Kill the Barflies", are described well by that criticism. It isn't until the middle part of the record that hooks really start to surface and stick around. "Uno Song" sounds like the Monkees covering a Beck ballad, which is a good thing. "Paint By Numbers", the disc's gem, has an addictive sing-song rhythm and some very funny "meta-" lyrics, i.e., it's a song about songs. What's funny is that the hip-hop-lite of the chosen single, "Meg Ryan", is not even remotely as catchy.
Imaginative singles surface later on, such as Ella Fitzgerald's "Chew, Chew, Chew Your Bubble Gum", injected into "What Are You Thinking?" Wish Mahaffey had really milked the clip for more. He seems to have the opposite problem with samples compared to the Puff Daddies of the world. Same thing with LL Cool J's "It Gets No Rougher", as heard in the title track. Come on, man, work the joint a little! There has to be a middle ground between using samples without abusing them.
Mahaffey and his friends have enormous potential. The lesson to be learned: when everything is thrown into every song, it can be almost as bad as not throwing enough. This record is easy to admire, but hard to *remember*. There may be all kinds of crazy noises on Breakfast with Girls, and a bunch of phenomenal ideas, but only a handful of really good, lasting songs. And songs are the secret.
