Album: “Get the Picture?”

Description

Smash Mouth: Steve Harwell (vocals); Greg Camp (guitar, keyboards, turntables, background vocals); Paul DeLisle (bass, background vocals); Michael Urbano (drums, programming). <p>Additional personnel: Ranking Roger (vocals); Michael Klooster, Matt Mahafe (keyboards). <p>Producers: Smash Mouth, Karl Derfler, Steven Marsden. <p>Recorded at Sound Management, San Jose, California; Bay View, Richmond, California; The Man Room, Scott's Valley, California; Interscope Studios, Santa Monica, California. <p>Smash Mouth has had an odd journey since their first album. They started out seeming like the friendly cousins of the kind of bands who play on the Warped tours and get worshipped by West Coast skaters. A little ways down the road, a cover of "I'm a Believer" in the Disney film SHREK endeared them to millions of pre-adolescents, adding an aspect to the band's appeal that's best exemplified by their depiction as cartoon characters on GET THE PICTURE's cover. A good-natured pop ditty about the "Seventh Grade Dance" further skews things toward the kid-pop demographic. At the same time, though, for anyone demanding the repetition of the band's initial salvo, "Hot" and the appropriately titled "Fun" are pretty close relatives to that first big hit "Walking on the Sun." Smash Mouth spends the rest of the album turning out the kind of highly rhythmic, melodic, sunny pop that's at the heart of all their hits, even pulling a UB40 by covering a Neil Diamond song in a reggae style and upping the ante by adding former English Beat singer Ranking Roger to the tune. Clever, those lads.