Reel Big Fish: Cheer Up! : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Third-wave ska revivalists Reel Big Fish have followed the path trod by fellow SoCal bands and chief influences No Doubt, Sublime and Hepcat. And they're doing it with panache. Satirical, witty, ebullient, the band's fourth album, Cheer Up!, has slices from a bunch of different pies. The title track is right out of the Sugar Ray playbook, while the ironic "Somebody Loved Me" sounds a lot like a Loverboy flashback (believe it!). The album also includes lashings of hard rock, dashes of Elvis Costello ("Drunk Again"), the lavishly Latin "Sayonara Senorita," a great a capella version of "New York, New York" and enough horns all over the place to seriously slap around the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. But at the root of it all is the ska sensibility, sometimes pure but more often, hybrid as the band edges closer into pure pop territory. But there's always the humor. Take the Kiss spoof "Rock 'n' Roll is Bitchin'" or the oh-so-cheerfully pessimistic "Dateless Losers." In the tradition of Madness, here is a band that will never die from taking themselves too seriously. On the other hand, Cheer Up! is a forceful and imaginative enough album to make lot of folks sit up and take notice.

ADRIAN ZUPP
(June 25, 2002)