The Super Groovy Band, Joyride!

The Super Groovy Band, Joyride! - The name of the band and the rather colourful cover to the album conjured up images of hippy jam bands, and truly, the Super Groovy Band would be very much at home opening for the likes of Phish, Blues Traveller or Widespread Panic. Where the other bands go wrong, however, with seemingly-endless and meandering, psychedelic, instrumental "jams" (their appeal for their audiences, I suppose), the Super Groovy Band have taken a far more minimalist approach, condensing their genre-defying psychedelia into 3-4 minute tracks of smile-enducing simplicity of the sort that the Spin Doctors have spent the last decade attempting (and failing) to produce.

Combining elements of jazz, folk, funk and rock, the songs are upbeat, catchy and full of lyrical gems such as "Who really cares, upstairs, it's what you wear. I really dig, oh ya, I like your wig." The charm lies in the fact that songwriter Gogo and the rest of his menagerie of musicians do not appear to take themselves particularly seriously, which adds to the chirpy joy of the album.

While I would not have expected to tolerate an album such as this one in its entirety, much less several times in a row, the Super Groovy Band have certainly won me over and I'll be looking to see their name in lights very soon.