Powerful Pain Relief is the second album by the American band Love Jones, released in 1995.[2][3] The band was considered part of the mid-1990s "Cocktail Nation" trend of retro cocktail lounge groups.[4]
The first single from the album was "The Thing".[5] Love Jones supported Powerful Pain Relief by opening for the Presidents of the United States of America on a North American tour.[6]
The album was produced by Paul du Gré and Love Jones.[7] The band downplayed the sillier lyrics of their first album and concentrated more on the groove of the songs.[8] The conga player and vocalist Ben Daughtrey left the band after the completion of Powerful Pain Relief.[9]
Trouser Press thought that "better songwriting and fatter arrangements carry the ebullient opener, 'The Thing', into sly cuts like 'Vigilante' and the solipsistic 'Me'."[7]CMJ New Music Monthly wrote that the album "shows the band as determinedly campy as ever, playing the kind of richly instrumental, overly opulent '70s jazz-pop that made the Association so famous."[11]The Austin Chronicle concluded that "fans of pink elephants, shag carpeting, and swizzle sticks will sway their velvet-clad booties quite righteously to Powerful Pain Relief; everyone else will miss the point entirely."[12]
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said that "the tacky (not funny enough to be called kitschy) collection includes the title track, a phony-sounding, Dee-Lite-style love song; the insipid Sly Stone-ripoff, 'World of Summer'; and 'Vigilante', a laughable attempt at menacing, blaxploitation-film badness."[13] The Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph deemed the album "a wildly funky brand of lounge music that contains more soul than anything Lawrence Welk ever did."[14]AllMusic wrote that "the band evolved their loungey sound away from a Combustible Edison bossa nova vibe to more rock but still created a smooth, cocktail mood."[10]
Track listing
No.
Title
Length
1.
"The Thing"
3:36
2.
"You Don't Know Me"
3:20
3.
"World of Summer"
5:12
4.
"Help Wanted"
3:39
5.
"Peepin'"
2:34
6.
"Stars"
2:33
7.
"Vigilante"
3:08
8.
"Roll-On"
3:53
9.
"Me"
3:03
10.
"Blue"
3:59
11.
"Powerful Pain Relief"
5:00
References
↑"How to Turn Your Home into a Space-Age Bachelor Pad". Orange County Register. September 17, 1995. p. F15.
