Jimmy Buffett - Fruitcakes (1994/2024) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Fruitcakes is the eighteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. Initially to be called Quietly Making Noise, the album was released in May 1994. It was Buffett's first studio recording since Off to See the Lizard (1989), with its five-year gap being the longest between two albums in his career. Buffett had used the hiatus to focus on writing books such as Tales from Margaritaville (1989) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992).

Fruitcakes reached #5 on the Billboard 200 album chart making it Buffett's first top five album. The album was also certified "Platinum" by the RIAA on December 19, 2004.

The first single from the album, "Fruitcakes," charted at No. 29 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The second single, "Frenchman for the Night," did not chart.

The best thing about Jimmy Buffett's Fruitcakes is the perpetually over-served Key Wester's Howard Beale impersonation on the album's title track. Like many of us, Buffett is angry about enormous movie theater sodas, crazy people walking around with mud in their eyes, and the screwy nature of modern religion and relationships. His gripe is delivered via a half-spoken ramble over a typical Caribbean lope that's as forgettable as it is recognizable. The song works not because it rehashes the same temperate groove, but because Buffett's rap sails so close to the infectious on-stage persona that's become his five-star meal ticket in recent years. The album's other standouts work for the same reason. A pastel cover of the Grateful Dead's "Uncle John's Band," the jaunty "Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost," and "Lone Palm," which looks at life from under just such a tree, all ring with that faded T-shirt vibe so prevalent in Buffett's best work. Along with the touching daughterly tribute "Delaney Talks to Statues," these slices of Fruitcakes further the fantasy of landlocked Parrotheads everywhere, the one that makes that final margarita okay, banishes winter to an old tin can, and shakes white sand into every crevice of the office cubicle. Earnest ballads like "Love in the Library" are nice, but Buffett's cheeky rhymes and effectively simplistic playing just can't support them with the sophistication – or seriousness – they deserve. His Panama Jack pirate act is a one trick pony, no question. But it has limitless legs and is continually sold on the fact that everyone wants to be Jimmy Buffett some of the time. Fruitcakes' most memorable morsels make this wish come true, if only for a few surf-soaked minutes.

Tracklist:
01. Everybody's Got A Cousin In Miami
02. Fruitcakes
03. Lone Palm
04. Six String Music
05. Uncle John's Band
06. Love In The Library
07. Quietly Making Noise
08. Frenchman For The Night
09. Sunny Afternoon
10. Vampires, Mummies And The Holy Ghost
11. She's Got You
12. Delaney Talks To Statues
13. Apocalypso


Thanks to the Original customer!