While Tape Head signaled the end of King's X's preoccupation with the straight-ahead style of hard rock and poppy grunge first glimpsed on Dogman, they would never really lose their penchant for the groove, and Tape Head's successor Please Come Home... Mr. Bulbous built on the foundation the trio had been laying down the last several albums with the heavier approach they had been taking. Please Come Home... stood out from the band's other work, however, for it's heavy emphasis on psychedelia, both lyrically and in the structure of the songs themselves. If the last couple of King's X records were a bit too much dUg for you, than the larger presence of Ty and Jerry's more esoteric inclinations may be more to your liking.
Lead-off track "Fish Bowl Man" lays the game plan out perfectly and is the entire album in a 4 minute capsule: an pointedly repetitive verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure featuring some very out-there lyrics, capped off with Jerry reciting a poem while the band apes a poetry slam soundtrack before reprising that chunky chorus. The rest of the album sticks close to this blueprint, delving further into outright psychedelia than they've ever gone, before or since. There are still moments of brevity to be found in, primarily in the tunes most clearly penned by Ty Tabor - the excellent "She's Gone Away" and "Bittersweet", while the heavier tunes, primarily "Marsh Mallow Field" and "Move Me", have an honest, almost workmanlike quality in their delivery that makes even lyrics like "A militant mothers, a militant brothers/A militant marsh mellow field" seem weirdly somber - it's definitely different hearing such blatantly bizarre lyrics recited in such a brooding way, and it's another quality that Please Come Home... has that no other King's X album has. You might think that with the word salad lyrics comes hand in hand with looser material, but that's another area that this record delivers the goods in better than it has any right to 8 albums in. From the multi-layered vocals in "Smudge", dUg's scratchy background vox at the back end of "Marsh Mallow Field", to the samples of laughter nestled in the background of "When You're Scared", there is a surprising amount of care taken here to make each song stand on it's own, and the raw material assembled on Please Come Home.. is stronger than any subsequent King's X record.
Clocking in at a modest 44 minutes, it's over in a flash (especially as the last two songs are just two separated halves of the same piece) and never overstays its welcome - almost certainly the most underrated King's X album, especially if you're looking for a lighter experience after their last several albums. The production is just as clear and warm as Tape Head / Ear Candy - at this point in their discography dUg's bass tone is basically pure chocolate, and Jerry continues his reign as secret weapon of this trio. It's mature but not pompous, catchy but not forced, and different in the best way.
B-
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