Jollification by The Lightning Seeds

Jollification, the third Lightning Seeds album, came out on Epic in 1994, and it's still very much Ian Broudie's baby: the Liverpool songwriter wrote every song and produced the lot himself, as he had since starting the project alone in 1989 and scoring with "Pure". He had it wrapped by the end of 1993, with Terry Hall, Alison Moyet and Ian McNabb lending a hand on some of the writing and Simon Rogers also pitching in.

The title doesn't lie. This is sunshine pop with a guitar jangle and a Merseyside grin, every chorus buffed until it gleams, with just enough melancholy underneath to keep it from going sticky. Four UK singles came off it, "Lucky You", "Marvellous", "Change" and "Perfect"; the album climbed to 12 on the UK chart and went platinum in December 1995, and afterward Broudie finally turned his studio project into a real touring band.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.