Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

Since new Radicals, currently the golden-bollocked boys of the American overground, are so fond of irony, they might like the fact that they strongly remind me of all those Scottish and northern English soulboys who dominated the UK charts around 1987-1988 (Hue & Cry, Danny Wilson, Deacon Blue, The Kane Gang, The Blow Monkeys et al).

With their big, lavish, well-produced sound, and their literate, anti-establishment, potshotting lyrics, New Radicals' whole strategy is what Simon Reynolds calls "entryism" - the old trojan horse trick employed by the above bands, sugaring the pill of angry, angular lyrics with sweet melodies and catchy hooks, trying to subvert the mainstream without any of the self-consciousness of a U2 or the coarse commercialism of a Puff Daddy.

New Radicals give the same importance and prominence to the piano that other groups give to the guitar. They are keycentric where others are chordcentric, and Greg Alexander has spent plenty of time getting the sound right, cramming every song full of pleasurable hooks and little melodic twists, turns and anagrams. Looking at the lengthy, over-wordy song titles ('Mother I Just Can't Get Enough', 'I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away The Ending', 'Jehovah Made This Whole Joint For You') is very misleading. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too is as user-friendly as a can of Coke.

'In Need Of A Miracle' is four minutes of wholesale pop perfection, all flawless Daryl Hall vocals and a riff that won't quit. 'Jehovah Made This Whole Joint For You' takes a shot at over-earnest American liberalism ("She's helping the environment by sipping pure water and such/ Then she screams we better start thinking about the ozone layer/ While throwing out a styrofoam cup"). The gorgeous 'Someday We'll Know' could have come off Steely Dan's Countdown To Ecstasy, so melodically strong that it manages to get away with lines like "Someday we'll know if love can move a mountain/ Someday we'll know why the sky is blue."

The title track is the one aberration, a tune-free mess with lyrics that bear no relation to those printed in the CD booklet. As for 'You Give What You Get' itself, after two months of saturation play it's starting to suffer from 'Come On Eileen' Syndrome: great song and all that, but by now, can you honestly bear to listen to the damned thing again?

Yet it's no accident that Alexander should have gone out of his way to insult Beck, Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson during the bridge of that song. This guy has every right to define himself against the prevailing Yank rock orthodoxy: he has more in common with Glenn Frey or Lindsey Buckingham than he has with any American "alternative" figurehead, which is why this album knocks spots off every other US rock release I've heard in the past two years.