Having collaborated on projects like
B.A.L.L. and
Velvet Monkeys,
Don Fleming and
Jay Spiegel recruited bass player
Eric Vermillion and set about recording under the
Gumball moniker. With the onus still very much on charging rhythms and searing guitars, the trio's 1991 debut album displayed a certain amount of continuity with
Fleming and
Spiegel's work on the final
B.A.L.L. release,
Four (Hardball). Tracks like "Summer Days" and "High or Low" sound as if, in another life, they might have been melodic bubblegum pop/rock, only to be reincarnated here as distorted and scuffed-up, beat-driven guitar fests. But although
Special Kiss is, for the most part, the sound of the pop song ripped up, stamped on, and fed through a grungey wringer, there are some variations on the theme of guitar noise in
Gumball's repertoire. With its shouty vocals and one-two staccato beat, "Alternate Feed" has an almost vintage hardcore sound for its short and not-so-sweet 55 seconds, whereas "You Know" -- co-written and performed with Glasgow's
Teenage Fanclub -- has an anthemic, singalong feel that's somewhere between glam and punk, in a
Damned sort of way. The ghost of
Sonic Youth can be heard lurking throughout
Special Kiss, especially on "Yellow Pants" and on the eerie, droning "Restless." That specter makes its presence felt more directly amid the sludgey, dense textures of the jam-like "Gettysburg" as
Thurston Moore contributes keyboards and brings another layer of disorder to the album. Even more shambolic is the almost free-form avant-garde cacophony of "Pre," an instrumental number largely comprising bursts of machine-gun drumming and spiraling guitar noise that give the proceedings the feel of an every-man-for-himself outro to a live song. The trio would reconvene with
Dinosaur Jr.'s
J Mascis and producer
Butch Vig for 1993's
Super Tasty.