Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 09/09/1999
Label: ffrr

Interestingly, while The All Seeing I's album is named after their single 'Pickled Eggs And Sherbert', the single is conspicuously not included on the CD.  Still, it's a bit of an adventure, eggs or no eggs. It features a bizarre selection of other musicians - the link is they, like the band, all come from Sheffield. Then the music styles are as different as, well, pickled eggs and sherbert. House, breakbeat, drum&bass, lounge, not a lot's left out. The album kicks off with the last single 'Walk Like A Panther', the quirky sounding ode to Sheffield with lyrics written by Jarvis Cocker and sung by 70s cabaret crooner Tony Christie.  Christie is also to be found crooning on two other tracks on the album - 'Stars On Sunday' and 'Happy Birthday Nicola.' Jarvis shows up on 'Drive Safely Darlin' and wrote the words to '1st Man In Space', with Human League's Phil Oakey on vocals. Babybird's Steven Jones wrote lyrics and sang on 'Plastic Diamond'. Also on the album is the brilliant 'Beat Goes On', a top 10 song for the band last January; 'Mary', a dark, offbeat version of  the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had A Little Lamb', while 'Stars On Sunday' is a smooth whistler thanks to Christie. Last, but not least, the dark ones include a couple of hidden tracks for your amusement: 'Dirty Girl' and 'Airy Armpits.' Nuff said! SD