Powerful Pain Relief
Second album by Love Jones, part of Cocktail Nation.
Last updated
In 1995, the American band Love Jones released their second album, Powerful Pain Relief, as part of the mid-1990s Cocktail Nation trend of retro cocktail lounge groups. The first single from the album was "The Thing." To support the record, Love Jones opened for the Presidents of the United States of America on a North American tour.
Track listing
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Thing | 3:36 |
| 2 | You Don't Know Me | 3:20 |
| 3 | World of Summer | 5:12 |
| 4 | Help Wanted | 3:39 |
| 5 | Peepin' | 2:34 |
| 6 | Stars | 2:33 |
| 7 | Vigilante | 3:08 |
| 8 | Roll-On | 3:53 |
| 9 | Me | 3:03 |
| 10 | Blue | 3:59 |
| 11 | Powerful Pain Relief | 5:00 |
Track listing from the source article.
Critical reception
Trouser Press found that better songwriting and fatter arrangements carry the ebullient opener 'The Thing' into sly cuts like 'Vigilante' and the solipsistic 'Me'. CMJ New Music Monthly wrote that the album shows the band as determinedly campy as ever, playing richly instrumental, overly opulent '70s jazz-pop that made the Association famous. The Austin Chronicle concluded that fans of pink elephants, shag carpeting, and swizzle sticks will sway their velvet-clad booties righteously to Powerful Pain Relief, while everyone else will miss the point entirely.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the collection as tacky, including a phony-sounding Dee-Lite-style love song, an insipid Sly Stone-ripoff, and a laughable attempt at blaxploitation-film badness. The Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph deemed the album a wildly funky brand of lounge music with more soul than anything Lawrence Welk ever did. AllMusic wrote that the band evolved their loungey sound away from a Combustible Edison bossa nova vibe to more rock but still created a smooth, cocktail mood.
Did You Know?
- Love Jones downplayed the sillier lyrics of their first album and concentrated more on the groove of the songs.
- Conga player and vocalist Ben Daughtrey left the band after the completion of Powerful Pain Relief.
More in Zoo Entertainment Albums
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Powerful Pain Relief (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced