Best known for their 1997 hit single “Sex & Candy”, Marcy Playground were quickly labelled as “one-hit wonders”, since no other song on their eponymous debut album charted on the Billboard. That was 1997, the year of OK Computer, Blur, Brighten the Corners, The Fat of the Land, The Colour and the Shape, Young Team; albums that shaped modern music. There was only very little place for post-grunge bands such as Silverchair, Bush and Collective Soul, but those bands already had their place in the industry.
And here goes Marcy Playground, with a second album, hoping to chart on the Billboard again, hoping to get that very little place they deserved. Yet they never got it, receiving mostly bad or mixed reviews for their sophomore effort, Shapeshifter. Why? I don’t know.
The guitar-driven “It’s Saturday” would be the only single to chart, when songs such as “America”, “Bye Bye” and “All The Lights Went Out” could have been potential hits. Singer-guitarist John Wozniak’s deep, soothing voice, is basically what you would get if you morphed Billy Corgan and Kurt Cobain together.
The Meat Puppets-esque “Rebel Sodville” borrows from Neil Young, and “Sunday Mail” sounds like Blur. Marcy Playground had clear influences, yet they knew how to write songs that were definitely theirs. They were also able to incorporate the soft-and-loud elements of grunge while making radio-friendly alternative rock.
Though songs like “Wave Motion Gun” and “Bye Bye” sound gleeful and peaceful, they treat of delicate subjects such as Wozniak’s heroin addiction, and on the latter, his interpretation of death. Heroin addictions and manic-depressive disorders are definitely not good, and even worse when put together, but in this case they were the inspiration for touching, genuine songs like “Love Bug” and “Never”.
Marcy Playground probably failed to achieve critical and commercial success due to an unfortunate coincidence, that being the fact that the masses were becoming sick of post-grunge, bands that sounded the same… however this is a band to discover and appreciate in spite of their relatively grunge-influenced sound.
Marcy Playground
Hail hail the lucky ones... 