From: New York Now ~ Music, Tuesday 5th January , 1999

New Radicals

'Maybe you've been brainwashed too'

[MCA]

Radicals' Chic: Making Old Sound New

The New Radicals are neither. They're as old as the hills when it comes to crafting glistening pop melodies and bracingly clear lyrics. In fact, they allude to so many sounds of the '60s and '70s, they can sometimes seem as much a collection of references as a band.

Luckily, they're never quite consumed by their allusions. Instead they come off most like Karl Wallinger's band World Party, which found consistently clever ways to give '60s rock its own melodies and lyrical point of view. Radical leader Gregg Alexander even sounds a bit like Wallinger when he sings - not to mention like Jagger, but with finer chops and less swagger. That is, when he's not sounding like Paul Weller doing a take on the falsettos of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. In "I Hope I Didn't Just Give Away the Ending," Alexander even puts a new spin on the background babble of Gaye classics like "Mercy Mercy Me," by erecting his own layers of patter.

In his bottomless grab bag of influences, you'll hear lilts of The Who's piano parts from "Quadrophenia" and the stutter of a Zeppelin riff, made more fleet - both employed within meters of each other during "In Need of a Miracle."

Alexander takes his main cues from the perfection of Beatles verses and the exuberance of Motown choruses. You'll hear both in the single "You Get What You Give," currently a minor hit on Modern Rock Radio. Since nearly every song on the New Radicals' album offers just as catchy a tune, don't be surprised if this becomes the first breakout LP of '99.

Certainly it deserves to be. Not only are the melodies and arrangements fetching, Alexander's lyrics sketch a fresh and likeable character: an optimist surrounded by cynics. Alexander's character constantly chases flaky, smart girls - overeducated druggies, essentially - the types who would find his jubilant view uncool if it weren't spiked by a contrary pluck. In that way, Alexander makes his positive attitude smart - as opposed to most pop, which naively yearns to believe good things can be true.

It's yet one more element that helps Alexander reinvent antique pop, another way to make everything old sound new again. Maybe that's a radical act, after all.

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