Article from JAM! (I think..)

Allegedly, Gregg Alexander, songwriter and brain trust of the New Radicals, just wanted to break into the music business like any other aspiring, slightly naive basement rocker. But reading the press info offers a great deal more insight into the mythical process that creates an overnight success. Who knows? Perhaps he really believes in using music to make "closed minds, sexism, corporate greed, economic and educational separation of the races, homophobia, and fat people phobia a thing of the past." Yet, in much the same way that Rage Against the Machine exploits their 'world view' from the cozy platform of unlimited tour support and as much new equipment as they want, Gregg's lock-step, Pepsi-generation 'new radicalism' is frighteningly, calculatedly unsubversive.

The loudmouth, speed-freak rhetoric that peppers his speech in interviews is neither apparent in his half-wit lyrical content, nor particularly well represented by the warmed-over '70s bluster-rock which accompanies it. Certainly, there's something to be said for sounding vaguely like David Essex or Journey or Elton John with a dash of more recent West Coast studio pop, but coupling it with dorky sociopolitical sweet nothings and ego-bloat self-gratification might well be a '90s anomaly. Nothing screams "I'm a naive youngster who just signed my life away to a big rich major label who've already spent my first two years' royalties on payola to modern rock radio" quite like intentionally coming across as a jackass in the press.

Outside the hype machine, a cursory listen to Maybe and its radio cash-cow "You Get What You Give" reveals at least a sort of genuine attempt to not sound exactly like everything else in the modern rock realm. There are echoes of late '70s/early '80s power-pop like Crowded House or (dare I speak it?) XTC. But mostly, it's not very inspired by anything but a desire to be famous, and Gregg Alexander, contrary to his opinion, is not the second coming of ... er, whoever it was that came first.