This is what twenty-first century music is supposed to be. Period. Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum (4M from now on) is a collection of every theme, every recording trick, and every trope in music from here to The Beatles (so what if that's hyperbole?). It's as if each of the five members of Tally Hall are from different decades, combining to form an anthology of music.
Speaking of the members, these guys are a weird group. Tally Hall is a college band from the University of Michigan that self-describes their sound as "fabloo rock." If that doesn't tell you that they are stoners, this will: each member is identified not by his name, but by the color tie he wears. Yep, that's right. Red, Grey, Yellow, Blue, and Green.
But enough about band members; only teenage girls and Beatles fans care about the members of a group. Let's talk about songs! 4M starts off with Good Day, a catchy, mostly vocal track whose lyrics are "Many little silly rhymes" and "Periods and lots of question marks." The chorus diverts from the main theme of the verses as the highly melodic apex of the song, and possibly the album. The harmonies are lovely as well, even if they sound auto-tuned (no vocals are auto-tuned in this song, but computer altered vocals do turn up quite frequently in the album to add effect rather than to compensate for lack of skills).
Greener and Be Born are both good tracks, but seem to fall short on originality. The hook in Greener at the beginning of the chorus, though: Jeff Lynne (go look it up) himself would have been proud of that one.
The low points of the album come on Welcome to Tally Hall, The Whole World and You, and The Bidding. Welcome to Tally Hall is a rap song meant to be the band's introduction, explaining the obligatory color system among other things. I just falls flat on it's face as the worst attempt at rapping ever. It's not even clever like The Bidding. Oh, The Bidding. A strange tale of a man trying to convince women to bid on him in a proverbial dating auction. The faux rap doesn't bother me that much, and it may be what your into. The problem is, it doesn't fit with what Tally Hall seems to be going for: interesting and complex musical styles (you can argue that rap is a musical style that is just being represented as reggae was on Banana Man, but I wouldn't).
The rest is positive, though. Taken For a Ride hides its philosophy on happiness behind most interesting, robotic melody this side of Roy Wood. Banana Man, as I've already mentioned, is just fun. There may be some guff to say about the lyrics describing the absurdities of people on retreat from their daily lives and the difficulties they face when returning home, or the song could just be pure fun. Spring and a Storm rips on the conventional deep songs about storms by proclaiming, "One time I tried to sing/About a storm/But you know/How it goes/Blah blah blah blah..." only to fall into the same trap as every other storm song in the second half. Two Wuv is a love song for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Listen to it, I'm not lying. The album climaxes on the final song, The Ruler of Everything. Strange vocal alterations attempt and succeed at creating a God-like character to contemplate life. The song also has an epic feel reminiscent of a Door's 10 minute suite, but is packed into a pop song.
Overall, 4M is a collection of musical styles from all time-periods, and that is why the album has such a cult following. I recommend giving the album a listen, as it rates this on my scale:
Originality: 10/10
Artistic Quality: 8/10
Listenability: 7/10
Overall: 25/30
