Smash Mouth returns today (November 27) with its long-anticipated, self-titled third album, featuring the current single, “Pacific Coast Party,” and the recent hit remake of the Neil Diamond/Monkees classic, “I’m A Believer.”
Smash Mouth detractors have long pegged the group as little more than novelty, a label that group guitarist and chief songwriter Greg Camp is well aware of. But Camp said that if the naysayers looked deeper they’d find some depth in Smash Mouth’s music.
“The people that actually call us the ‘novelty’ band and stuff like that, if they were actually to listen to more than ‘All Star’-which also has a lot of darkness woven around in that song too-there is a lot going on,” he says. “We have a lot of things to say and we see a lot of stuff, you know, like any other band that travels around the world you see a lot of crazy stuff. And it’s not all happy California-in-a-can, fun-in-the-sun whatever. I really hope that people really dig into this record and read the lyrics and listen to it and get what we get out of it, especially the haters.”
Smash Mouth also had its share of personal challenges leading up to the release, perhaps none greater than the loss of lead singer Steve Harwell’s 6-month-old son, Presley Scott Harwell, who succumbed to leukemia in July. The album is dedicated to Presley’s “loving memory.”
