CDs Revisited: Reel Big Fish - 'Cheer Up'

Here's a fact about me: Every time that I am aware of a Reel Big Fish show in New York City, I attend it. It doesn't really matter what else is going on- if they're playing nearby and I know about it (and thanks to constant spam emails from various concert venues and online ticket vendors, I almost always know), I'm there. Every time.

Here's another fact about me: I don't listen to Reel Big Fish's albums anymore. I just can't do it. A stray song might pop up on shuffle and I can make it through, but putting on a whole album is just too much for me. I don't think that lot of it has aged well, and if I'm going to find myself listening to a 90's ska punk band, I prefer to listen to bands that take it a bit more seriously. Even for this entry it's been difficult for me to sit down and listen to the whole album in a single sitting. Which is funny, because I don't even think it's that bad.

But before I dive into that, one more story: Cheer Up was my first Reel Big Fish album. That's right: not Turn the Radio Off, or Everything Sucks like most people who liked th don't know why I chose Cheer Up, it's not like the internet didn't exist when I bought the album, I could have easily Googled (I suppose back then there's a good chance I used Yahoo! instead) the band and I doubt that any results would have suggested that I start with their then-most recent album. So that's how this one came into my possession.

As far as ska-punk goes, Cheer Up is pretty light on both the ska and the punk. Actually, for a band so commonly associated with the ska-punk genre in general, Reel Big Fish is light on both of those genres. This is not a new revelation and I know people have been saying it for years but it's something that I've always kind of ignored. But specifically back to this album: it's not bad but it's far too much all at once. What could be a pretty decent 10 song album is stretched out into 16, plus a hidden track. And it's not like all of the songs are winners to begin with, so there's really no need for so many. Reel Big Fish may not have ever been lyrical geniuses but the standard heart-broken rock song fare of "Somebody Loved Me" or "Where Have You Been?" are near masterpieces when compared to the uncomfortable "Ban the Tube Top" (even if it had been written when the band members were in high school it'd still be a creepy song). There are tracks with the sounds of a live audience or a party mixed into the background despite not being recorded live at either a show or a backyard. There are a lot of cover songs. Too many cover songs.

There's actually only three, but for an album that isn't a covers album three feels excessive. The rendition of "New York, New York" is particularly unnecessary with a lot of the backing vocals being more obnoxious than anything else, and while their take on Sublime's "Boss DJ" isn't all that bad, it's still a Sublime song (more on why I don't like Sublime in a future installment). The only cover that works within the context of the album is J. Geils Band's "Give It To Me" and that's probably because it's a hidden track so its context is "here's a bonus thing" and not "we thought that would work with the sequencing of songs that also includes a track with a fake live audience, an instrumental with fake party chatter in the background, a piano-driven ballad, and two other cover songs."

I guess my point is that this album is bloated. If the album was trimmed down to just the first nine tracks (minus "Ban the Tube Top") and the final two songs, it'd be a lot more bearable.

Final verdict: Eh. "Brand New Hero" and "Drunk Again" are really good songs, and most of the A-side is decent enough. You can stream it via Spotify below or check it out on Amazon.