A little over a decade ago, Smash Mouth was all anybody could talk about. Every radio, television, and, thanks to the success of Dreamworks’ Shrek, movie screen was feeding into the hype.
The sound was tailor-made for the late 90s and early 2000’s: quirky, inspired by a new wave of modern alternative music after the grunge era was wearing thin. 1960’s-esque organs and surf guitars mingled with ska, punk, and pop sensibilities. It was casual and fun. It exemplified perfectly the direction that alternative rock music was heading during this crucial transition period.
These days, though, it’s uncommon to hear Smash Mouth brought up outside of conversations about Shrek memes and weird internet mashups. Strange, considering the band is still active. Less so when one considers how the musical landscape has changed so much.
On a whim, I recently dug back into Smash Mouth’s classic discography. Their first four albums were immediately recognizable, as I had heard them many times before, mostly on the radio or on countless CD players at casual get-togethers.
There were two things I noticed, though. First, that the music wasn’t speaking to me. Sure, it was danceable and entertaining, but the hooks often did not stand out so much in a world where every radio hit has to be an instant ear worm. From a modern perspective, this hurts Smash Mouth’s early work. Many of their songs seemed to be of the good-not-great variety. There are notable exceptions, of course: “All Star,” “Padrino,” and “Stoned,” among others.
Secondly, I was surprised to find out that the band had released three more albums, their most recent being Magic, released in 2012. I was intrigued. I had heard nothing about Smash Mouth’s work after 2003’s Get the Picture?.
Now I knew the band had released something relatively recently. Is it better than their previous albums? Is it solid by today’s musical standards, as well as the standards they set for themselves in the past? Is it good? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes.
On the first listen, Magic reads like typical Frat Rock with a tendency for the over-masculine, but if the listener indulges in even a slightly closer analysis, they will be more than pleasantly surprised, as I was. The album is better than Smash Mouth’s first four albums, considered classic by fans.
The instrumentalists are tight, particularly Randy Cooke on drums, and Steve Harwell’s voice has only gotten better with age. Indeed, it seems that the passing years have made a wiser man of Harwell, with lyrical work and vocal delivery that show maturity and growth, without sacrificing the sound that made him famous.
Take, for example, “My Future Ex Wife.” Going in, I expected an obnoxious, even sexist tune about some chauvinistic loser who collects women like trophies only to inevitably replace them later. I was embarrassed by how wrong I was, and feel I owe Steve and the band an apology for my rash judgment.
The track shows Harwell at his most emotionally vulnerable, both in lyrics and in the execution of the vocals themselves. It is not a song about the gleeful objectification of women, but a lamentation on insecurity, about the desperate need for companionship, even when that companionship is unhealthy. It is, at its very essence, a beautiful and tragic tale of loneliness. That Harwell’s emotive, pleading vocals are thinly masked in the same raucous vocal style present on all of Smash Mouth’s most party-friendly hits makes the song feel even more poignant.
Then there’s the title track, a song that sounds almost too similar to Avril Lavine’s “Complicated,” but works so well as an effervescent Pop Rock anthem. The verse from Hip-Hop artist J. Dash doesn’t do too much to elevate the song, but it certainly doesn’t detract from the momentum.
“Perfect Planet,” to my ears, is a perfect Smash Mouth track. The vocal performance is exemplary and impassioned. The musicianship is tighter than almost any alternative band I’ve heard in recent years, and the hooks – The hooks are everywhere in this song. They’re non-stop and they are so, so good. When I first heard this piece, I could not stop playing it over and over again. Possibly the catchiest song Smash Mouth has ever put out.
The whole album goes on like this. Every song is immensely catchy. The musicians bring their A-game to every track, and the lyrics prove to be a classic mix of anecdotal narrative story-telling and the quirky nonchalance that the band is famous for. On Magic, Smash Mouth amazed me. They blew away my expectations. If this album had been released a decade ago, it would have been their biggest hit, by far. It is an emotionally intelligent, hook-filled journey, one that I recommend everyone take at some point, no matter their reservations with the band in 2016.
-Andrew Oliver
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