Cereal Killers
Too Much Joy
Giant, 1990
Reviewed by
Ben French
Allegedly recorded at Steve Vai's house, Too Much Joy's Cereal Killers
is the ultimate guilty pleasure in 1990s college rock. Ridiculously fun lyrics
and blatantly cliched chord changes keep this album in your collection and out of view of
your new girlfriend and snobby friends at the same time.
Cereal Killers is the type of CD found in glove compartments and locked desk
drawers of guilty critics all across America. These people are too proud to admit they
scream the (very clever) lyrics of "William Holden Caulfield" alone in their car
on the way home from a shitty day at work.
But not me, no sir-ee.
No, I love these songs openly. And very personally. For whatever reason, "Crush
Story" and "Nothing on My Mind" still get me singing. I know Too Much Joy
is cheesy. But it's that intelligent, tongue-in-cheek cheese that makes these guys so
enjoyable. It's the kind of cheese that makes other groups like They Might Be Giants and
B-52s fun.
"Gonna feel like hell tomorrow, so I won't go to sleep tonight," the band
proclaims at the opening of the classic "King of Beers." Honestly, it's not just
a perfect statement for a carful of semi-geeky, semi-intelligent teenagers, looking for a
party they will most surely be thrown out of. But any attempt to explain the song's higher
implications will surely involve me admitting a bunch of stuff I'd rather not divulge
right now.
So I will hold myself back...
I'm not certain every one will enjoy the lyrical wit or savor the three-chord movements of
this pop mini-masterpiece nearly as much as I do. I started listening to this the same
time my friends were getting into the likes of Vanilla Ice's To the Extreme and
Bon Jovi's Living In Sin. But unlike those records, which few today would admit
are in their possession, Cereal Killers remains vital to my listening
experience, almost as much as it did when I first listened to it ten years ago.
