Spin Doctors
[#] Pocket Full of Kryptonite (1991)
It's dorky, but it's fun.
Reviewed June 16, 2025
Like if the Chili Peppers were a jam band, or if Blues Traveler turned up the funk (note John Popper's harmonica on "More Than She Knows"), with echoes of Steve Miller ("Little Miss Can't Be Wrong") or even Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Off My Line") in there—it all gives Spin Doctors this incredibly familiar and admittedly slightly dorky white guy funk finish on Pocket Full of Kryptonite. The good news is that they more than make it their own, or at least rock it like they just came up with it. Spin Doctors' entire MO is playing what can be rather insular jam band funk like idiosyncratic all-ages pop rock—no big surprise that 5x Platinum crossover success and even multiple spots on Sesame Street awaited.
Repeated listens tend to split Kryptonite into two kinds of songs, fleet-footed bluesy rock with greased up guitars, groovy backbeat drums, and slap bass, and more ballad-y comedown tracks thick with that glorious reverb-y late 80s production. It all gets tied together with Chris Barron's instantly recognizable New York yawp and poetic neuroses about competition in love on surprisingly several tracks here, but the real triumph of Kryptonite is its concise, poppy nature, and its weakest moments are when it goes jammy. Seriously, when "Shinbone Alley" turns into "Hard to Exist", tune out there. You're only missing nine minutes of spin getting doctored.
| Essential: | "Jimmy Olsen's Blues", "Forty or Fifty", "More Than She Knows" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" |
| Non-Essential: | "Hard to Exist" |
| Rating: |  |