Well, It’S Really Good Background Music

Mon., May 10, 1999

Erin Haick Jenkins

Marvelous 3 “Hey! Album”

The latest alterna-pop rock act to hit the charts, Marvelous 3, has a few sensibilities that may enable it to stick around for the full 15 minutes of fame, rather than vanishing in the first 30 seconds.

In songs such as “Every Monday” and the current radio single, “Freak of the Week,” Marvelous 3 combine loud, hook-filled choruses with intelligent, if not revealing, songwriting.

With incredible gusto and the enthusiasm of a room full of kindergartners, singer Butch Walker belts out verses filled with crazy rhymes about ruined relationships and the perils of being single.

While this is not material that hasn’t already been covered by a thousand-and-one soft-rock bands, Marvelous 3 manage to add an air of sarcasm that, small as it is, is a welcome respite from the Dion-esque breast-beating of current radio.

Marvelous 3’s sarcasm comes out in the odd turn of phrase that often saves a song from being utterly saccharine.

Walker’s tongue is firmly wedged in cheek in “Every Monday,” as he cheerily goes on about getting sex for free, but having to pay a woman to listen to him: “Talk about rock stars and models on dope/and how I can’t cope with this scene.”

But when the band bombs, it hits the ground nose-first and bloodily. Gusto or no, nothing can save songs with a chorus: “You know that I suck at this/And you suck at it too/and we’re just two vampires in love.”

Sheesh.

Apart from the occasionally painful rhyme, Marvelous 3 has created an enjoyable disc. Something to pop in the player when background music, rather than lyrics, are what’s important.

Grade: B-

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