Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb is the third studio album by American rock band Tripping Daisy, released on July 7, 1998, through Island Records. It was the band's first album to be recorded with guitarist Phil Karnats and drummer Benjamin Curtis, and was the band's last album to be released during guitarist Wes Berggren's lifetime. Produced by Eric Drew Feldman, the album is a stylistic departure from the band's previous work, showcasing a more artistic sound that is underpinned by pop sensibilities. The album also features a significant amount of experimentation with its guitars, vocals and instrumentation.
A few months prior to the release of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Island Records' parent company was involved in a major corporate merger, which negatively affected the album's promotional campaign. The album failed to meet sales expectations; neither it nor its singles charted, resulting in Island Records ending its contract with Tripping Daisy two months after its release. Despite this, critics gave Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb mostly positive reviews, praising its improved musicianship and songwriting. The album is now regarded as the band's best work, and has been viewed as a precursor to Tim DeLaughter's next project The Polyphonic Spree.
Background
In June 1995, Tripping Daisy issued their second album I Am an Elastic Firecracker, which includes the hit single "I Got a Girl". The album was a moderate commercial success, reaching number 95 on the US Billboard 200 chart, and also appeared on several charts worldwide. The band, however, faced numerous difficulties during this period; after a tour of the United States, drummer Bryan Wakeland left the band in February 1996 due to creative differences. He was replaced by Mitch Marine, who performed with the band during a poorly received supporting tour with Def Leppard throughout 1996. In time, Marine proved to be an "even worse [musical] partnership" than Wakeland. Sales of I Am an Elastic Firecracker were not as high as the band and Island Records hoped; it had sold 300,000 copies by 1998.
Tripping Daisy, who were exhausted from touring for six-and-a-half years, went on an extended hiatus for most of 1997 and nearly split up. The band's frontman, Tim DeLaughter, had also become increasingly disillusioned with the music industry, and felt that Island Records were trying to change the band's focus away from their music and towards album and singles sales. After experiencing a spiritual awakening telling him he "was capable of doing anything [he] had envisioned", DeLaughter returned to writing new material for Tripping Daisy. While working on music, DeLaughter met guitarist and trumpeter Phil Karnats; the two connected musically and began working on a side project called The Platinum Experience, with DeLaughter on drums and Karnats on guitar. Tripping Daisy guitarist Wes Berggen later joined The Platinum Experience playing keyboards, and later, all three members were playing guitar. Karnats was soon asked to join Tripping Daisy for a tour of Texas in mid-1997, and in June of that year, he was made an official member of the band, which became a quintet.
Recording and production
Prior to the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Tripping Daisy sent a demo tape of their new material to producer Eric Drew Feldman. Tim DeLaughter became interested in working with Feldman after hearing his work producing Deus's album In a Bar, Under the Sea (1996): according to DeLaughter, "Sounds I heard on the Deus record were part of a world we wanted to be able to play in". Although they did not expect Feldman to respond, he agreed to produce the band's next album.
On October 7, 1997, the day on which the band were scheduled to travel to Dreamland Recording Studios in Hurley, New York, the band fired Mitch Marine. "Mitch's drums were loaded up in the trailer and we were getting ready to leave ... But we just couldn't go and make a record with a group of people who weren't right", DeLaughter said. The band commenced recording at Dreamland with Feldman and engineer Andy Baker, who also worked on I Am an Elastic Firecracker, on October 10, 1997. After spending two weeks residing in Woodstock—without a drummer—the band contacted UFOFU drummer Benjamin Curtis and asked him to play on the record. Curtis arrived at Dreamland on October 19, 1997, and immediately started recording drum tracks for the album's partially completed songs. Curtis related to the rest of the band better than he expected, and became an equal partner in the album's songwriting process. Curtis found the experience recording with Tripping Daisy to be "really positive" and "a relief" following UFOFU's acrimonious breakup that year, and on November 4, 1997, he was made a permanent member of the band. Tripping Daisy collectively wrote and recorded around 20 songs at Dreamland for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, five of which were written at the studio. According to DeLaughter:
Feldman gave Tripping Daisy an unprecedented amount of creative freedom during the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, and he encouraged the band to try out new ideas in the studio. According to DeLaughter; "He likes to experiment and then go into the experiment even further, and before you know it, you're crafting [an innovative] record ... His whole thing was, 'Just make sure I have plenty of tape so you can do anything you want to and there's no pressure'". Feldman insisted recordings that contained mistakes and missed notes were to be left intact, often responding to the band's requests to re-record takes with "No way. That’s awesome." The band deliberately interfered with Wes Berggen's guitar knobs and timing while he was recording takes to create "'anything goes' noise", which the band later integrated into the album's tracks, giving the album a raw, "scruffy and unpredictable" mix. The band also experimented with various instruments on Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb with the use of xylophone, mellotron and cello, as well as various keyboard instruments—including Korg synthesizers, a Wurlitzer organ, a Yamaha CP-70, an organ that belonged to DeLaughters' mother-in-law, and an Ace Tone organ. Trumpets are also featured in some of the album's tracks, performed by Karnats.
Island Records did not interfere with the recording sessions of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb. Previously, during the recording of I Am an Elastic Firecracker, the company's A&R representatives pressured Tripping Daisy to produce more commercial-sounding material, likely in response to the poor performance of the label's 1993 re-release of the band's debut album Bill, which was expected to be an immediate success. DeLaughter attributed Island's lack of interference to the departures of A&R executive Rose Noone and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell in 1996 and 1997, respectively. DeLaughter said:
Recording sessions for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb concluded in December 1997 and the band returned to Texas just before Christmas. Feldman and Baker mixed the album at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas in January 1998. The band was extremely proud of the album; bassist Mark Pirro called it "the best we've been so far" and DeLaughter said he had "finally made a record and been a part of something that [he'd] wanted to achieve for a long time".
Composition Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb has been described as alternative rock, art rock and neo-psychedelia. The Austin Chronicle labeled the album "space pop", whilst AllMusic described it as "[balancing] punk-pop with art-rock". The album is a departure from the grunge-oriented sound of Tripping Daisy's previous releases Bill and I Am an Elastic Firecracker; it embraces a variety of musical styles whilst displaying pop music influences throughout. The album's sound was compared to the works of bands such as Jane's Addiction, Built to Spill, and The Flaming Lips, as well as to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
DeLaughter envisioned Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as an artistic statement that challenged and rejected modern-day radio, which he saw as "formulated and predictable", and the pressures from Island the band had faced with I Am an Elastic Firecracker. He also considered Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb to be "the most honest record coming out in the last few years", and felt the album's openly flawed nature gives it a quality of "truth". Island's then-CEO Davitt Sigerson described Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as "more epic and more emotionally connecting" than Tripping Daisy's earlier works.
FMQB described "Waited a Light Year" as "an adventurous pocket symphony" that "uses three distinctly different musical movements that culminate in a blinding wall of noise". "Sonic Bloom" is a psychedelic pop ballad about "the joy and wide-eyed amazement of finding, falling and feeling love". Some of the album's tracks exhibit a punk rock influence; "Mechanical Breakdown" was described as "neo-futuristic" and pop-punk, while "8 Ladies" features off-kilter, post-punk riffs in the vein of Shudder to Think. "Our Drive to the Sun / Can a Man Mark It?" and "Tiny Men" echo the band's early, melodic sound found on Bill. The album's final track "Indian Poker Pt. 2 & 3" is a combined cover of the songs "Indian Poker (Part 2)" and "Indian Poker (Part 3)" by the indie rock band Brainiac, from their album Hissing Prigs in Static Couture (1996); the track was dedicated to Brainiac's lead singer Timmy Taylor, who was killed in a car accident in May 1997, in Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb liner notes.
Tim DeLaughter's lyrics were described as dense and often cryptic; Pitchfork described the lyrics as "[coming] straight off of Robert Pollard's Guided By Voices lyricpad". His vocal performances were compared to those of The Flaming Lips' lead singer Wayne Coyne, and the use of reverb and distortion effects on his vocals was also noted by critics. Feldman permitted DeLaughter to apply extensive overdubbing and harmonization to his and his bandmates' vocals in an attempt to create more melody; he had attempted to do this on Tripping Daisy's previous albums but the producers he worked with thought it was annoying. The album's vocal harmonies were compared to those of The Beach Boys.
Tim DeLaughter derived the album's title from a greatest hits record by the Pilgrim Travelers he found in the studio; he said: "One of the songs on there was 'Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb'. Something went through me like a bolt of lightening, and we were all saying, 'That's It! That says everything we're feeling about this record.'" DeLaughter also chose the album's title because it "meant something as broad as my thoughts, to embrace this record that I thought was heavy". The album was originally titled Guts but the title was changed after it was discovered fellow Island Records artist John Cale had released a compilation album under that name in 1977.
Release and promotion