Too Much Joy Releases First Album In 25 Years | ‘Mistakes Were Made’ | Exclusive: ‘Oliver Plunkett’s Head’
American alternative rock group Too Much Joy are back after 25 years with ‘Mistakes Were Made’.
This might be the most adventurous and eclectic Too Much Joy record. Recorded at Riverworks, Hobo Sound and various band members’ houses between late May and early October, 2020. Engineered by William Wittman, Leo Blumenfield, Matt Noble, James Frazee and Anu Kirk. TMJ is/was a punk-pop band of some minor renown. Some of that renown was due to their music, which included semi-hits such as ‘Crush Story’, ‘Donna Everywhere’, and ‘That’s a Lie’ — a cover of the LL Cool J tune that featured the man himself in the music video, which actually got played quite a bit during daylight hours on MTV back when they did that sort of thing.
“We weren’t really planning on making another record; this album only exists because 2020 sucked so goddamn much. Our humble hope is that, since it now exists, it can make whatever year you’re listening to it in suck a little bit less.”
“Oliver Plunkett’s Head is a real thing you can actually see in a church in Ireland. He was a martyr who was drawn and quartered and burned by people offended by his beliefs, but I guess some of his fans made off with his skull, which now sits in a glass case. It’s a pretty horrendous sight — being an atheist, it mystified me to see people kneeling, praying and crying in front of it, just as much as it mystifies me why anyone would want to murder someone for believing the “wrong” things about God.”
“I wrote most of the lyric way back in ’91, in some pub right after seeing it. But, despite multiple efforts, we could never get an arrangement we all liked. Fast forward to 2021, as we were looking at old songs we’d never recorded for ‘Mistakes Were Made’, and I mentioned how much is always wanted to make that lyric work. Sandy somehow unlocked some chords that sound like they were waiting there all this time. His arrangement called for some b verses that didn’t yet exist, so I wrote a few more words, and the song finally felt complete.”
“Oliver’s been dead a few centuries, so I suppose he could wait a couple decades for his anthem.”
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