Album Details

• Artist: Self
• Album: Breakfast With Girls
• Label: Dreamworks
• Year of Release: 1999
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: trismus on 2008-03-04

SeLF’s Breakfast With Girls is so brilliant and so enjoyable that it currently resides on the top of my “Albums People Must Know About” list. It’s a crime that Matt Mahaffey is a relative unknown in the world of music. A professional drummer by the age of twelve, Mahaffey formed SeLF and produced the band’s first album in 1995 (Subliminal Plastic Motives). It saw marginal success with the single “Cannon” but still represented the band as just another young alt-rock group a la Silverchair. It wasn’t until Breakfast With Girls that Mahaffey’s compositional prowess was truly realized. Taking queues from jazz, rock, and world music, the album is somehow shaped into one of the most inspired pop-rock albums ever. Everything you’d want in an upbeat, catchy, musical package is here and in spades. Yet, somehow, despite its critical acclaim, Breakfast With Girls couldn’t find its way into the hands of anybody. Too bubblegum for the underground and too progressive for the pop crowd, SeLF found this pearl resting at the bottom of the industry’s ocean.

The first track, “The End of It All”, perfectly sets the table for the whole album. The feel, formula, and sound that fills the CD to its maximum capacity is given to you upfront. If you don’t like what you hear here, don’t bother continuing. Chances are that you will enjoy it or, at least, be intrigued to move forward to “Kill the Barflies” which acts as the albums first taste of true progression. While maintaining a pop sensibility, the song manages to exist somewhere outside the solar system. There’s more noise and electronic textures going on here than any traditional musicianship. It’s a great example of Mahaffey’s thought process and leaves you wondering (like so many other great songs) how somebody could think of this shit.

From this point, the ride is at full speed and “Meg Ryan” firmly plants you within the album.

There’s, more than likely, no going back from here. The tracks click by with a happy-go-lucky charm, touching on nearly every genre of music imaginable which is why this album is so great. Somewhere along the line there will be at least one harmony, riff, beat, or lyric that gets you off completely. It’s one of those CD’s that makes it impossible to be in a bad mood and, even if it stays as one of your guilty pleasures, will remain a solid “go-to” for quite awhile.

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