The thing I love most about The Mr. T. Experience is this: Even when the songs are sad, the music still makes me happy. If you want to wallow in sadness and self-pity, go listen to Stabbing Westward. If you want to elevate a bad mood or just nod your head in agreement with the lyrics without feeling that ugly twinge of self-loathing, go with MTX.
Here come the cliches: infectious beats, charming lyrics, catchy hooks, and you can even dance to it. This review may be cliche; the album is anything but.
The second song on MTX's new album, Yesterday Rules, is a great example of how a band can put all of the above into one little package and makes it work. Can you imagine dancing to a song called "Fucked up on Life?" You can dip your girlfriend and spin her 'round while singing lines like "I'm outstanding in my field and all I ever want to do is just get plowed."
With each subsequent MTX release, I get anxious with my first listen to the record, wondering if they can reach the lyrical pinnacle of the album before. They have never let me down. And this one just may take over Revenge is Sweet and So are You as my favorite of their collection.
Songs like "She's Not a Flower" (You're not a King Bee, you like honey and you're packing a sting) will convince you that MTX is the only band that could pull this type of music off so earnestly without the smarminess that other bands who try to be ironic or metaphoric or just sweetly sad reek of.
The music is just as layered and quirky as the lyrics. On "Oh, Just Have Some Faith in Me" you get a song that takes you to the beach; a keg party, lots of well-tanned kids shaking their arms and kicking up their legs and jumping around like fools having the best time of their life. And if that's the party song, then the requisite boy-with-a-guitar-singing-in-front-of-the-bonfire song would be "Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer," with all the drunken kids singing along on the chorus.
"The Boyfriend Box" will resonate with anyone who's ever stored away old love letters or silly mementos of past relationships (If you need to go any deeper, you can dig them out again, just in case you need to be reminded of what a fool you've been), but instead of being the melancholy, sappy, cry-along song another band might have turned this into, MTX gives the lyrics a whimsical backdrop of music and you end up smiling in spite of yourself.
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