G. Love & Special Sauce
Superhero Brother (Brushfire)
By Catherine Cole
Published: July 5th, 2008 | 9:00am
It’s really hard to hate on G. Love & Special Sauce, but then again, the Philadelphia-grown band makes music so severely smile-forward, it’s also difficult to silence your inner cynic from shouting: "Warning! Sugarcoated overload coming through the speakers!" Listening to the group can leave you challenged — but in a good way.
Like many of G. Love’s previous records, Superhero Brother blends political conversations with an optimistic message and invites you to sing along. And the hippie-dance-pseudo-blues musical background does an excellent job of facilitating that goal. The album’s lead single, “Peace, Love and Happiness” will have you shouting the track’s namesake chorus: “Peace! Love! Happiness!” while wishing for a convertible so you can allow the sun to pour directly into your soul. Garret “G. Love” Dutton penned the song after being involved with an outreach program aimed at exposing the underprivileged kids of Rio de Janeiro’s ghettos to the benefits of surfing and music, which is evident in some of the tune's more political lyrics; “How come the presidents just build more bombs / When they should start disarming?”
Other tracks keep the harmonicas and bongo drums going in good rhythm, but occasionally get a bit … ahem … lyrically distracted with life’s other conundrums — as was apparently the case with track, “Who’s Got the Weed?” (He does, just in case you were wondering).
G. Love & Special Sauce has always doled out happy-go-lucky, sunny rock tunes meant to inspire listeners by melting away life’s negativities — and Superhero is no exception. To quote G. Love’s simple motto (from “Peace, Love and Happiness”), “If you hatin’ then you sure ain’t livin.” Now who can be a hater after hearing that?
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G. Love & Special Sauce's MySpace page
Issue #34
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