Smash Mouth: Smash Mouth : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Memo to the cartoon network: Smash Mouth need their own show. They already seem to exist in their own New Wave-damaged, Farfisa-driven world - they share Sugar Ray's humorous outlook and dress sense but little else. "Pacific Coast Party" is way typical of Smash Mouth's irresistible, sunny power pop: It opens with a swirling string section straight outta the Love Unlimited Orchestra songbook, gets spiked with disco sound effects, then gives way to the kind of guitars that seem crunchy even as they ripple with melody. Keyboard player Michael Klooster pumps out Sixties organ bits for almost every track, and guitarist-songwriter Greg Camp provides the sound teeth, but singer Steve Harwell is the big, slobberin' heart of the band. His raspy, gravel-mouth vocals and winking delivery give Smash Mouth much of their charm. Harwell has admitted to a love for mid-period Duran Duran, but the Broadway-show shuffle of "Disenchanted" suggests that he and the rest of the band may be closet show-tune fans as well. This goofy, head-bobbingly hummable album also includes the band's cover of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer," but the really funny thing is that even though it's a cool version of a Top Forty classic, it's not as good as all the rest of the bubblegum on Smashmouth.

PAT BLASHILL
(RS 883/884 - December 6, 2001)