According to the press kit for
Jim Bob
's sixth solo album since the breakup of his early '90s
college rock
duo
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
,
A Humpty Dumpty Thing
is a concept album about a dystopian future where state-mandated creativity forces a man with writer's block to either complete an 80,000-word novel or go to jail. Although the former
James Robert Morrison
has played with long-form ideas before, most notably on his rather brilliant concept album
School
, this "concept" sounds like a gag on
's part. Indeed, on songs like the self-explanatory
"God's Blog,"
the dead serious protest ballad
"This Phoney War"
and
the Kinks
-like
"Pizza Boy"
(a tongue in cheek demand for mindless entertainment that allows the audience to stop thinking about the world's miseries for at least a moment),
is more clearly than ever writing about his own time and place, an England in the grips of socio-political malaise. This may well be the least funny record
has ever recorded, although his trademark flashes of humor creep even into fed-up rockers like
"Battling the Bottle (Fighting the Flab, At War with the World),"
and the album-closing
"From This Moment"
has an undeniable anthemic quality akin to
the Who
's
"Join Together"
as performed by
twee
Brit-pop
pioneers the
Television Personalities
. More
Billy Bragg
than
is a change in direction for
, but a fruitful one. ~ Stewart Mason