JELLYFISH -‘ WHEN THESE MEMORIES FADE 7” VINYL SINGLES BOX SET’ RELEASED BY NEW LAND – 30 SEPTEMBER 2022

On 30th September 2022, reissue label New Land + celebrates the singles career of enigmatic ‘90s US rock band Jellyfish with the release of When These Memories Fade. This is the first-ever Jellyfish vinyl box set and is limited to 1,000 copies only. Inside are 7 remastered 7”s spanning the band’s original run of singles, a bonus ‘covers’ single exclusive to The Box Set, a deluxe 64-page booklet featuring interviews alongside previously unseen photographs, memorabilia, and for the Jellyfish completest, a 3D poster with custom Jellyfish glasses.

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While Jellyfish were only around for a short few years — they released two albums in the early ‘90s, which included some tracks from the singles collected here as well — their legend looms large some three-plus decades after their music first appeared in record shops.

Jellyfish formed in the late ‘80s out of the ashes of Beatnik Beatch, a power-pop band that included Bay Area high school pals Andy Sturmer and Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. That band released one album on Atlantic then split up, leaving Sturmer and Manning to their own devices. This resulted in the creation of Jellyfish and with it some of the most sublime pop music of the MTV era, featuring arrangements that demanded to be put under a microscope and witticism-laden lyrics that gazed at the world through a unique lens. Jellyfish existed both
within the rock trends of times and apart from them, meshing power pop, arena rock, and whatever other types of music fit a song’s mood in a way that turned each song into its own aural spectacle. “We don’t fit anywhere, and we’re up against a wall all the time,” Manning told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. “It would be very easy to slip into whatever the current fad is and cash in on that movement for as long as it lasts. Fortunately, we’re not associated with anything like that.” Their monster-sized hooks made them a pop band; their arch lyrics fit them in snugly alongside the too-cool-for-school modern rock crowd; they had a respect for the pop-rock titans who had preceded them, as proven with covers of Wings, Argent, Badfinger, Styx, Elton John, and other album-rock stars they’d stick into their live sets.

Jellyfish’s two albums, Bellybutton (1990) and their magnum opus Spilt Milk (1993), made clear that Sturmer and Manning were leaders of an album band—the songs flowed and crashed into one another, making each long-player its own self-contained universe. But their keen knowledge of pop’s inner workings, and the minute detailing that they gave to each song, made them undeniably a great singles band as well. Looking at them through this series of
seven 7-inches, we see a group who could create perfect power pop that had allegiances to the Beatles, ELO, Wings, XTC, Queen, Supertramp, and Todd Rundgren.

From their very first single ‘The King Is Half-Undressed’ through to gems like ‘Baby’s Coming Back’, ‘New Mistake’, ‘Bedspring Kiss’ ‘I Wanna Stay Home’, and ‘The Ghost At Number One’, these beautifully presented singles show us how on the money Jellyfish really were.