New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (1998)

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

After two unsuccessful solo outings around the turn of the nineties, one original and one essentially a repackaging of the other, Gregg Alexander seemed like he had given up. Alexander had been dropped by two record labels and had been busking in Central Park, settling into the life of an ineffective musician. By 1997 though, Alexander had donned his bucket hat, enlisted some other musicians calling themselves New Radicals, and received a $600,000 advance for MCA. Why the sudden change of heart? Alexander simply was the right man at the right time. It helps that Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too is anchored by an effortless pop gem, "You Get What You Give", the kind of song you like to think could be a hit in any era but the more you think of it, seems like a ringer for 1998 in particular. In a world of Fatboy Slim, Beck and a lingering nostalgia for BritPop, the plucky piano and guitar chords would be enough, with the shouted, bombastic choruses, that song, and the entire record sounds huge.

Those moments still live up to the first listen, even when each of us is out of high school or college or our morning commute or wherever Alexander weaves his melodies into the deepest part of our body, the parts sometimes associated with sentimentality, but more often the parts we've already forgotten about. Even though Alexander abandoned the project and for the most part his own music career, the album stands as one of the few 55-minute albums from the CD era that feels brisk and earned, an album that drips in the modern sounds of its time while running perpendicular to its album cover and music video locations. Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too isn't exactly a lost classic, it's hard to say that when a handful of grandmothers could recognize its lead single, but it is a time capsule, a last breath from college rock, and an album that stands just as high as its one-hit wonder.

~8.5

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