New Radicals' disc shows off best, worst sides of pop music

'Do you know who I am?' New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander asks repeatedly on 'Flowers', a track from the band's new album, 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too'.

Alexander's question would seem to apply to most music on pop radio stations these days, most of which sounds bland, homogenized and manufactured.

The band makes an admirable effort to distinguish itself throughout 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too', but ends up with an album that manages to be loaded with both the best and worst of its genre.

On the plus side, the record is an excellently crafted, tightly-woven album, combining singable, hook-laden pop sounds with rambling, Dylanesque lyrics and trippy instrumentals.

The down side to 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too' is, ironically, the same things.

The production on the album is overwhelmingly slick at times, and the synthesizers and overdubbing are sometimes more intrusive than anything else.

In particular, the samples at the end of the opening track, 'Mother we just can't get enough' subtract more than they add to an otherwise decent song.

The lyrics, too, while brilliant and infectious at times, can be equally trite and dull at other times.

Perhaps the twelve songs that make up the album might have been cut to nine or ten, because good songs such as 'You get what you give' and 'Someday we'll know' are sometimes overshadowed by run-of-the-mill offerings such as 'I hope I didn't just give away the ending' and 'Gotta stay high'.

The one problem that drags the disc down repeatedly, though, is that Alexander and co. can't seem to decide if their style is more similar to that of Beck or the Backstreet Boys.

When all is said and done, they wind up sounding like the misbegotten offspring of the two, making an album that shows flashes of brilliance sound uneven and mediocre.

In the end, the problem isn't that 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too' is a bad album. It's not.

It's just that it could have been so much better.

~ Jason Dooley ~

Home Lyrics Discography Reviews Charts Articles & Interviews Gallery Links Tabs Biography