Breakfast with Girls is an album released by Self in 1999. This album was the highly anticipated major label follow-up to Subliminal Plastic Motives. It wasn't well-received upon release, in part due to the delays in its release, but also because of the drastic change in style from its predecessor. Rather than the more rock-oriented approach of the debut, Breakfast with Girls saw Matt Mahaffey focusing more on the more experimental sides of his music. The change confused many fans, and the critical response wasn't much better. Most critics generally agreed that it was sonicly impressive, but many also accused him of spending too much time on production and not enough on the songwriting. Despite the lukewarm reception, many of the band's fans now consider Breakfast with Girls to be Self's masterpiece, citing its quirky songwriting and diversity as reasons. It contains a wide variety of styles ranging from industrial to funk to hip-hop to blues to jazz to orchestral pop. The album also contains a few slightly more conventional pop/rock songs. The album produced one single, the bouncy pop song "Meg Ryan", but like its parent album it didn't see much success. The album was also released on Vinyl with bonus tracks, and as a limited edition CD, which had a full 12 page booklet of artwork done by Brian Botcher. People who pre-ordered the album also received an EP, Brunch, and there was a vinyl release of the album, with the Brunch EP and two other songs added as bonus tracks. Both of these items are now amongst the most highly sought after Self items, though all the bonus tracks are available online as downloads.
