For the first time in a decade, Sugar Ray have a brand new album! Words I never thought I would find myself typing\u2026 and man alive, is this thing terrible.<\/p>\n
After the less than amicable departures of much of their classic lineup, the band now consists of Mark McGrath, guitarist Rodney Sheppard and drummer Dean Butterworth (Good Charlotte). Like many people, I liked the band back in the \u201990s, but I was not prepared for the excrement that can be found on this record. I don\u2019t know what the hell anyone was expecting from Sugar Ray in 2019, but this is without a doubt the worst record of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHighest Tree\u201d is a ukulele-driven pop song destined to be played on beaches and nothing else, even though they\u2019re still using programmed beats. \u201cCoconut Bay\u201d is an embarrassing romp through Buffett territory; these guys were always better than this, but you would never know it from this disc. It seems as though the band have thrown in the proverbial towel and gone to the lowest common denominator with this stab at \u201cyacht rock.\u201d \u201cGood Good Lovin\u2019\u201d is a decent enough pop song, but that\u2019s as much as you\u2019re going to hear on this record; nothing like \u201cMean Machine\u201d or even \u201cFalls Apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSunday Love\u201d is another reasonable enough pop song, but you will find yourself hitting skip constantly on this disc. In 201 it may feel like we need a song like \u201cWhat the World Needs.\u201d but we definitely don\u2019t need to hear it from Sugar Ray. These guys now sound like they\u2019ve been in a beach tequila haze that\u2019s been going on for a decade. The album\u2019s absolute nadir is a cover of that timeless ol\u2019 chestnut \u201cEscape (The Pina Colada Song)\u201d during which I had to keep checking to make sure my ears weren\u2019t bleeding from the garbage coming out of my speakers.<\/p>\n
The intro to \u201cCalifornia Gold\u201d reminds me of \u201cWhat a Fool Believes\u201d by the Doobie Brothers, leading to the obvious question: what the hell happened to this band?! Where\u2019s the band that did \u201cEvery Morning,\u201d \u201cFalls Apart\u201d and my personal favorite \u201cWhen It\u2019s Over\u201d? It seems like Sugar Ray only made a new record because being on Celebrity Big Brother gave McGrath the \u2018inspiration\u2019 to get back in the studio. <\/p>\n
Like Everclear and Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray have been continually touring their \u201990s hits for years while occasionally making new music. At this point I think it\u2019s best if they just keep touring state fairs and never go back in the studio again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10403],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-45683","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sugar-ray","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45683"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45683"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}