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Hey! Album Review
Rating: 4 stars
Ever find it impossible not to sing along when a band chimes in with big background do-de-di-do-dos? Can you get happy over hearing 3 minutes of crunchy, rocky power pop? Then you need to find this disc.
Hey! Album is one of the best distillations of FM radio circa 1978-1984 that I’ve heard this decade. Shards of Joe Jackson in his early punky stage, The Kings, The Vapors, Cheap Trick, even a melody line lifted from OMD -- they’re all hidden like Easter eggs in the dozen upbeat tracks of Marvelous 3’s debut. And yet, despite the continual musical references to power pop past, Hey! Album listens with a solidly ‘90s immediacy. “You’re So Yesterday” leads it off with a punchy guitar riff and a great lyric: “You were kool as hell like e-mail, but timeless like a letter.”
Singer Butch Walker goes on to reference Bobby Brady as he literally washes away all memory of the title “yesterday” girl as he sings “all your little blonde hairs go down the drain.” “You’re So Yesterday” begs for rock radio play, but it was actually the XTC-ish circular guitar lines of “Freak of the Week” which propelled the band from local Atlanta bar band to Elektra recording artists. “Freak” appeared on the band’s second independent album and got them airplay on a major Atlanta radio station. Last fall the band signed to Elektra and re-recorded that second album with a big studio budget -- the result is Hey! Album, a rediscovery of pop-rock that’s catchy and fun, filled with well-sung harmonies and backgrounds -- a polar attitude to the current crop of “whiner” bands like Matchbox 20 and Eve6.
A concert bill of Fastball, Marvelous 3, Coward and Kara’s Flowers -- with guest appearances by Enuff Z’nuff and Cheap Trick -- could be the perfect power pop bill of 1999. Of course, that concert is just a pipedream and Hey! Album is on the shelves at your local Best Buy. So pick it up.