Reviews on MYBBT
Reviews of releases from the New Radicals and Robert Earl Keen Contents Daily News, New York Daily News, New York ~~~~~~~~ By Jim Farber Every season has its overlooked gems. Here's a selection of deserving recent discs we missed: NEW RADICALS ``Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too'' (MCA) The New Radicals are neither. They're as old as the hills when it comes to crafting glistening pop melodies and bracingly clear lyrics. In fact, they allude to so many sounds of the '60s and '70s, they can sometimes seem as much a collection of references as a band. Luckily, they're never quite consumed by their allusions. Instead they come off most like Karl Wallinger's band World Party, which found consistently clever ways to give '60s rock its own melodies and lyrical point of view. Radical leader Gregg Alexandereven sounds a bit like Wallinger when he sings - not to mention like Jagger, but with finer chops and less swagger. That is, when he's not sounding like Paul Weller doing a take on the falsettos of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. In ``I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending,'' Alexander even puts a new spin on the background babble of Gaye classics like ``Mercy Mercy Me,'' by erecting his own layers of patter. In his bottomless grab bag of influences, you'll hear lilts of The Who's piano parts from ``Quadrophenia'' and the stutter of a Zeppelin riff, made more fleet - both employed within meters of each other during ``In Need of a Miracle.'' Alexander takes his main cues from the perfection of Beatles verses and the exuberance of Motown choruses. You'll hear both in the single ``You Get What You Give,'' currently a minor hit on Modern Rock Radio. Since nearly every song on the New Radicals' album offers just as catchy a tune, don't be surprised if this becomes the first breakout LP of '99. Certainly it deserves to be. Not only are the melodies and arrangements fetching, Alexander's lyrics sketch a fresh and likeable character: an optimist surrounded by cynics. Alexander's character constantly chases flaky, smart girls - overeducated druggies, essentially - the types who would find his jubilant view uncool if it weren't spiked by a contrary pluck. In that way, Alexander makes his positive attitude smart - as opposed to most pop, which naively yearns to believe good things can be true. It's yet one more element that helps Alexander reinvent antique pop, another way to make everything old sound new again. Maybe that's a radical act, after all. (c) 1999, New York Daily News. Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too 1 ( 1998 ) Mother We Just Can't Get Enough / You Get What You Give / I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending / I Don't Wanna Die Anymore / Jehovah Made This Whole Joint for You / Someday We'll Know / Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too / In Need of a Miracle / Gotta Stay High / Technicolor Lover / Flowers / Crying Like a Church on Monday One hit wonders are more commonly associated with either Rap artists or novelty pop, no disparagement to Rap intended - and no, I'm not about to mention Vanilla Ice either! But, first of all we have a little mock Rock N Roll guitar part leading into the Eighties pop of 'Mother We Just Can't Get Enough'. Eighties Pop? Yes, well. Stranger things have happened. It actually starts out a pretty nice song but it's far too long at over five minutes to justify it's existence. What do I mean by that? Well, it sounds nice, pretty good in fact, but only for about two minutes. That's all the time you actually need to hear everything the song has to offer. The other three minutes only provide more Bono from U2 style vocal wailing in the worst possible 'tribute' to Bono you could imagine, mix in a little semi-rap 'funk' section of vocals, and there you go. A perfectly good song triumphantly ruined and slammed into the realms of complete unsubtly and extreme annoyance factor. Speaking of which, 'You Get What You Give' is one of those songs. The first thirty seconds of hearing it played for the umpteenth time on the radio sounds great! Hey, perfect pop to go! It is in fact one of the most obvious and irritating songs ever written, and the very fact The New Radicals were unable to follow it up ( they split up in fact! ) seems to prove this is one of those songs, that for inexplicable reasons captures the imagination of the general public above and beyond that which the song actually deserves. I mean, it offers nothing new. Thirty-something's may well have nodded their heads in appreciation at this reprise of one of the worst years for charting rock and pop (1988, in case you were wondering) but the rest of us wanted to puke after around a minute of listening to the song. The rest? I think I've brought this up in other reviews of other artists. I want a song TO PROGRESS! Especially if it's a pop song! The likes of the Velvet Underground may very well be able to stretch a single groove over eighteen minutes, but then, they offer stupid lyrics that change throughout the song, no chorus, distortion - the blissful variety of random distortion! What happened to pop songs having interesting middle eights? Cos this bloody doesn't! 'You Get What You Give' is a poor song, but a good late Eighties pop single. Shame it was released in the late Nineties, really. Even more of a shame it became a massive hit, but what are you gonna do? Even more a shame is the fact the rest of this album is even more hideously worse than even the mediocre two songs which open this set. 'I Hope I Didn't Give Away' is full of mock soul and totally unconvincing and shambolic although actually presented as a shiny pop song. Which, doesn't make sense to me. It's lacking in execution, let's put it that way and the vocals are very wayward, to say the least. 'I Don't Wanna Die Anymore' is vomit inducing with a whining sounding vocal to the nth degree. If you're gonna whine about how miserable you are, at least offer a little desolate romance for the lost romantic poets to latch onto! 'I Don't Wanna Die Anymore'? Why? This sorry excuse for a ballad has cheered you up, has it? Have you met a wonderful girl? Are you filled with rage? Have you suddenly taken singing lessons? Ah, forget it. To be honest, I can't even be bothered to do a song by song analysis of this sorry excuse of an album. We get more bland, more lacking in imagination, more lack of anything even slightly new. We get lots more wayward vocals. Now, wayward is ok, if the voice has character. But, these vocals don't have character. Sure, they sound distinctive. That alone doesn't equal character. This is just a singer, who can't sing. He tried his best, I'll give him that. He's obviously a big fan of soul music, so that's a plus - although not when applied to this record of course, because all of his performances lack conviction and sound contrived. The execrable five minute long title track sums up everything that's bad about this entire album. A hole in the middle of nowhere has more substance than this. It's not even happy sounding! If I'm gonna get a song lacking substance, I at least want it to sound either stupidly dumb, or stupidly happy. This, is just trying. It tried my patience, anyway. But, taste is taste. I was going to say something else just now about the almost pleasant pop of 'Flowers' but it's temporarily eluded my mind. This album has that effect on people. It makes you forget you've ever even existed. 'I Don't Want To Die Anymore'? I died half way through listening to this album. http://www.adriandenning.co.uk/newradicals.html