[Despite his youth, Martin Mull manages in his first] two albums to carefully and inexorably carve up almost every stereotype in popular music from Fletcher Henderson through the theme for A Man and a Woman, bossa nova, hotel cocktail groups, John Coltrane, Merle Haggard, late-night dance band broadcasts, motel cocktail lounge combos, drunken songwriters, Randy Newman, Roger Miller and anybody else I may have overlooked here at this point in time.

The satire works on several levels simultaneously. On the one hand there's a line like, "The bag I'm in is just a package from a package store," with its oblique and subtle reference to Freddy Neil and the rest of the lyric with its puns and allusions. On the other, there's the freaky lyrics of love songs that have a twist to them either about midgets, dogs or what-have-you….

There's the sound of Merle Haggard as well...