Goody Goody Gumdrops
From the kid-scrawl cover art, with photos of the group edited in, collage-style, to the classicism of its construction – eleven songs, none hitting the three-minute mark – Goody Goody Gumdrops has valid claim to perfection, if that’s something you’re looking for. But what matters about 1910 Fruitgum Company’s third album isn’t so much its contours and structure, as its ease of performance and its melodic nous. If the intro to the album’s title song hints at garage rock, it gets kaleidoscopic soon enough, without losing its essential pop-ness; “Mr. Cupid” points towards the daffier end of psychedelia for a moment. I’m not sure ‘development’ really plays into a bubblegum group’s career, and there isn’t much of a shift from 1910 Fruitgum Company’s debut album Simon Says through to this one, but I enjoy Goody Goody Gumdrops more; it lands all its blows, however softly. And Teenage Fanclub, a group who know a thing or two about a perfectly crafted song, covered the title song.