maura's Full Review: Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too by The New Radic...
when i had a job i would set my alarm for six, because i knew i would stay in bed for about 75 minutes hitting snooze every nine minutes or so. this strategy resulted in some dreams with great soundtracks -- imagine a subconscious haze backed by the cure and you've got it. although, hmm. maybe that experience isn't so different from listening to the cure *normally.* anyway, so one morning my snooze alarm went off and i was actually awake for it, and this song snaked out of the speakers, big guitars, floaty boy voice over it that went into falsetto from time to time. it sounded sort of like ... 'raspberry beret.' hmm. what WAS this? i thought to myself, although the sleep-addled parts of my brain probably caused the actual thought process to be more akin to 'fwwaaasiiisss?' the riffs stuck in my head for the next few days, and it wasn't until a week later that i heard the song -- 'you get what you give' -- in its entirety, in a car with ben; i made him keep the ignition on until the dj had backannounced the track.
so okay, i had a band name and a song title, and now i wanted to own the cd, because, you know, once a song gets in your head you have to have it. welcome to the intersection of consumerism and insanity-prevention; if only my pop culture predictor ears had been on and i'd realized the song would reach fatboy slim levels of ubiquity by now. anyway, virgin had it on sale for $9 for some reason, so i snapped it up. and i brought it home and put it on my stereo, loud.
the loudness of my stereo i guess enhanced the overproduction of the record. but oh my god, picking apart the tracks on these songs was just too much -- i have to admit that my copious listening to the output of the elephant six collective, as well as my own abortive four-track noodlings, has made me a lot more aware of the pieces of musical puzzles. but this wasn't a puzzle, it was an ENDLESS LABYRINTH. vocals were all over, instruments were everywhere -- there was so much GOING ON instrumentally (not really musically so much), that it was just distracting and i had to put on unrest to cleanse my overloaded palate. sure, 'you get what you give' was good to work out to, but the rest -- ugh. just too much.
two weeks later i switched on the radio and heard the new radicals song again. or so i thought. this song was actually by the waterboys. it was called 'the whole of the moon,' it was 10 years old, and it was basically the teat from which the new radical guy suckled his 'inspiration' and it was probably the song i heard that morning in the first place anyway. sigh.
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