''Mutiny'' is an album by American

power pop Power pop (also typeset as powerpop) is a form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and ch ...

band

Too Much Joy Too Much Joy is an American alternative rock music group, that formed in the early 1980s in Scarsdale, New York. Members The original members were Tim Quirk (vocals), Jay Blumenfield (guitar, vocals), Sandy Smallens (bass, vocals) and Tommy Vi ...

. It was released on September 12, 1992 on

Giant Records In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: '' gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...

, and was the third and last album Too Much Joy released on this label.

Critical reception

Critics generally gave ''Mutiny'' favorable reviews. For example, ''

People A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...

'' described it as "multifaceted" and "the band’s best yet." Similarly, in a retrospective review, Stewart Mason of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

wrote that "In retrospect, this is probably Too Much Joy's best album, and certainly their most consistently listenable." Not every critic was so favorable, however; for example,

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

gave it a "neither" rating, which corresponds to an album that "may impress once or twice with consistent craft or an arresting track or two. Then it won't." Another less-than-favorable review came from Chris Heim, who described it as "a mix of forced humor and bare-faced commercial lunging at today's star-making grunge audience." Patrick Schabe wrote in 2006 that the album, because it was "in many ways a more mature and superior rock album" than its predecessor, '' Cereal Killers'', "alienated fans who were drawn to the goof-ball humor" of ''Cereal Killers''.

Ira Robbins ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...

agreed that it was Too Much Joy's most mature album, writing that compared to their previous work, it was "marginally more serious, placing as much emphasis on straightforward melodicism and sly style-mongering as chucklehead topical indulgences." Mark Jenkins of ''

the Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' wrote that the most memorable song on the album was "Donna Everywhere".

Track listing

# "Parachute" – 2:21 # "Donna Everywhere" – 3:48 # "What It Is" – 5:40 # "Just Like a Man" - 2:42 # "Sin Tax" – 3:33 # "Starry Eyes" – 3:26 # "Stay At Home" – 3:18 # "Magic" – 2:44 # "In Perpetuity" – 3:59 # "Sort of Haunted House" – 3:46 # "I Don't Know" – 2:45 # "Unbeautiful" – 2:49 # "Strong Thing" – 4:22 # "Sorry" – 2:22

Personnel

*Bass, Vocals – Sandy Smallens *Drums, Vocals, Percussion – Tommy Vinton *Engineer – Geoff Daking *Guitar, Vocals – Jay Blumenfield *Mastered By – George Marino *Producer – William Wittman *Vocals – Tim Quirk

References

{{Authority control Too Much Joy albums 1992 albums Giant Records (Warner) albums