Cheer Up!

This Southern California band certainly has reason to be in good spirits lately. Its fidgety brand of ska-punk went kaput a few years ago, and while they watched several of their contemporaries rinse away, the members of Reel Big Fish inexplicably now find themselves on the same label as platinum pop stars Britney Spears and 'N Sync. Good for them. Cheer Up! is the kind of feisty, kinetic album that people stopped making years ago--"Ban the Tubetop" is pure Oingo Boingo frivolity, "What Are Friends For" revisits the tubular splendor of Fishbone, while "Good Thing" wouldn't sound entirely out of place on a vintage Elvis Costello disc. Not quite as knowingly hip as Sum 41, and clearly not as commercially savvy as No Doubt, Reel Big Fish occupy a precarious position, and they know it. The intro to "Where Have You Been?," the closest thing they have going to a Blink-182 song, features an answering-machine message left by a disgruntled record company employee begging for just one "modern rock" single. As if. --Aidin Vaziri