The Marvelous 3 put out
the kind of back flipping/knee buckling power pop you just don't hear anymore.
Full of mischief and melody, singer/songwriter Butch Walker's poison pen
wordplay dives in and out of pulverizing slabs of guitar on this loose
limbed, but tight-as-hell, major label debut, "Hey! Album.."
Having already been
compared to sprightly pop icons such as Joe Jackson and Cheap Trick, the
band has made their native Atlanta safe again for vigorous pop bands hungry
for some good ol' fashioned stardom. Their 1997 indie release, Math And
Other Problems, garnered them 4 Atlanta Local Music Awards, including a
"Best Atlanta Rock N' Roll Band" nod in 1997. The group followed up with
their self-made Hey! Album. on their own Marvelous Records in October of
'98. The disk caused such a buzz with critics and radio that a swarm of
major labels began pursuing them. This past winter the threesome signed
with HiFi/Elektra, and hit the studio with producer Jim Ebert (Jason Falkner,
Meredith Brooks) to re-record the album, with Butch Walker also playing
a co-producing role. "It's been like an artistic science project," laughs
the effusive Butch. "We enlisted Jim to come and put the pieces of this
jigsaw together. Basically we've made the songs three dimensional."
And you just may need accompanying
3D glasses for rollicking pop gems like "Freak Of The Week," which was
immediately snagged up by influential Atlanta Radio Station 99X, a move
which further ignited the outpouring of local affection for the band. But
for Butch, bassist Jayce Fincher, and drummer Slug, the road to rock n'
roll approval started a long time before anyone ever heard of M3.
"This is no Cinderella
story. We've known each other since we were kids, growing up in a suburb
of Atlanta. We've passed through a lot of bands together. It's funny but
the one common thread through all of our experiences was that all three
of us were the youngest in our family. And all three of us grew up with
two sisters and no brothers," smiles Butch. "You might say listening to
our sisters' records was the real bond."
The music they were weaned
on was an eclectic mix. "Thumb through my sister's records and you'd find
Kiss, The Bee Gees, Earth Wind and Fire. Music wasn't so categorized then.
They were all great stars and you could find them in any record collection."
Walker says the band has tried to ensure that the fiery batch of songs
on Hey! Album. don't succumb to any genre specific marketing ploy. "One
of the reasons we do the kind of music we do is because we were tired of
shoe gazing, apathetic bands that disingenuously followed the others. We
grew up loving Top 40 rock. We loved bands that played great shows. That
was the only criteria. We've played 200 or more shows a year, for the past
couple of years now, and I mean all across the country. Part of our raggedness,
and our willingness to proclaim 'we are what we are' is because of that.
We've slept in vans and in parks, doing gig after gig. We are addicted
to playing live. I think that tightness comes across on our album, as well."
M3 have indeed received rave
reviews for their live show, which included Atlanta's 1998 Big Day Out.
The band played in front of 50,000 people, sharing the stage with groups
such as The Goo Goo Dolls, Semisonic, and Fastball.
"Our live show is f*cking
awesome. It helps in my songwriting too," says Butch. "The constant playing
gets you to know how each other's brain works. I can play the first three
notes of something completely new and they'll hear it from beginning to
end. It's a great process. I grew up loving great songwriters like Elvis
Costello and Queen, and other bands who knew how to create that tension,
that emotion in their work. That's what we strive for."
You can hear the band's
influences in certain songs. The soaring/plunging dynamics of "Every Monday"
recalls the roughshod bravado of Freddie Mercury. And one of the album's
more poignant cuts, "Mrs. Jackson," rides along on a snappy, Cars-driven
burst of guitar. But Walkers' fierce delivery, anchored by Jayce's and
Slugs torrid rhythm section, display a confident demeanor that is all their
own. The LP clearly has the lived-in feel of a band that has known each
other through thick and thin. "I realize a lot of my characters are lonely,"
he says. "But the songs don't have a lonely feel." He points to a track
called "Indie Queen," written about the behind the scenes goings-on of
the record world. "We are already finding out there are things that go
on after the camera is off," he says. "I wrote that about the unglamorous
side of all this stuff. The personal demons seem to come out after someone
gets known."
When asked about the story
behind "Freak Of The Week," Butch offers up this explanation. "I guess
it's about people starting to worry about how they're being perceived.
Worried if they're going to be seen as selling out."
For Walker, a self-confessed
ham, his solution is to stay true to the music and don't worry about how
you're going to be judged. "And don't be afraid to enjoy it," he adds.
"We entertain the hell out of people. And it's so much f*cking fun to do
it. It beats waking up and having to make the doughnuts, if you know what
I mean."
