King Kong Groover

King Kong Groover is the second and final album by Babylon Zoo, released on 26 February 1999. It met with negative reviews and was a commercial flop. The singles from the album were "All the Money's Gone", which peaked at #46 on the UK Singles Chart, and a cover of Mott the Hoople's "Honaloochie Boogie", which was issued as a promotional single in France (plans for an international release were abandoned).

King Kong Groover
Studio album by
Babylon Zoo
Released26 February 1999
GenreGlam rock[1]
Length48:22
59:14 (Japan edition)
LabelEMI
ProducerJas Mann
Babylon Zoo chronology
The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes
(1996)		 King Kong Groover
(1999)		 Love Lies Bleeding (single)
(2000)

The song "Chrome Invader" was originally called "Silver Surfer" but had to be changed for copyright reasons. The Japanese version of the album includes two bonus tracks: an acoustic cover of T.Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" and a remix of "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes".

Commercial performance

An "abject failure",[2] King Kong Groover sold less than 10,000 copies and did not chart.[3]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
Dotmusic[4]
Gaffa[5]
The Guardian[6]
NME1/10[7]
Scotland on Sunday[8]
The Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music[1]

King Kong Groover met with negative reviews.[3] NME scored the album one out of ten, calling it a "slickly produced machiavellian plundering of pop classics" and a "clumsy effort to resurrect a career that was a fluke in the first place."[7] In the Scotland on Sunday, Colin Somerville awarded the record one star out of five. He argued that "Bikini Machine" plagiarises The Beatles' "Across the Universe", and concluded: "Sadly lacking in anything even remotely approaching originality, King Kong Groover is the sound of a career spinning into terminal decline."[8] Dotmusic felt that none of the songs match the "futuristic kick" of Babylon Zoo's 1996 debut single, "Spaceman".[4]

Some critics offered scant praise. Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian wrote that bandleader Jas Mann is "shrill and fun, but lacking the depth to take him beyond 'Spaceman'."[6] In the Sunday Tribune, Anna Carey described King Kong Groover as "sub-Bowie" and "stupid", and "Manhattan Martian" a "piss-poor rip off of 'Starman'." She allowed, however, that the record is "hard to hate".[9] Kevin Courtney of The Irish Times found the record to be a marked improvement over predecessor The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes (1996), but noted that despite its "[aspirations] to Ziggy Stardust-era elevation, Babylon Zoo are still tied down by too many threadbare ideas".[10]

In a favourable retrospective review, AllMusic's Dave Thompson said that while there is "nothing in sight to even approach the peaks that their debut hit 'Spaceman' attained", the album has "yearning majesty" and "neo-operatic flair".[2] Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music author Colin Larkin was mildly positive, but remarked that Mann's "full-on adoption of glam rock... appeared too late to cash in on the attendant furore surrounding Todd Haynes' genre tribute, Velvet Goldmine."[1]

Track listing

All tracks written by Jas Mann except where noted.

  1. "All the Money's Gone" – 3:46
  2. "Manhattan Martian" – 6:01
  3. "Honaloochie Boogie" (Ian Hunter) – 3:28
  4. "Honeymoon in Space" – 4:53
  5. "Stereo Superstar" – 3:39
  6. "Chrome Invader" – 5:03
  7. "Bikini Machine" – 3:55
  8. "Are You a Boy or a Girl?" – 5:05
  9. "Hey Man" – 5:34
  10. "Aroma Girl" – 6:58
  11. "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes" (Armageddon Babylon mix) (Japanese version only) – 5:54
  12. "Cosmic Dancer" (Marc Bolan) (Japanese version only) – 4:58

References
  1. Larkin, Colin (2000). The Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music. Virgin Books. p. 30. ISBN 9780753504277.
  2. Thompson, Dave. "King Kong Groover review". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
  3. "Spaceman band falls back to earth". Sunday Mercury. The Free Library. 9 May 1999. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  4. "Babylon Zoo - 'King Kong Groover'". Dotmusic. 26 January 1999. Archived from the original on 5 September 2008. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  5. Nielsen, Lars (21 September 2001). "Babylon Zoo: King Kong Groover". Gaffa (in Danish). Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  6. Sullivan, Caroline (5 February 1999). "This week's pop CD releases". The Guardian: 42 (Friday Review, p. 16).
  7. "King Kong Groover". NME. 2 January 1999. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  8. Somerville, Colin (7 February 1999). "Album releases". Scotland on Sunday.
  9. Carey, Anna (14 February 1999). "Rock/pop CDs". Sunday Tribune.
  10. Courtney, Kevin (12 February 1999). "Rock/Pop". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 6 December 2018. Retrieved 5 December 2018.
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