Here's an experiment for you kids to try. Take some rocks, pebbles or broken up pieces of gravel and hold them in your hand. Now, with your other hand, shove as much bubblegum as you can into your mouth and chew for about 30 minutes to an hour. After the gum is nice and gooey, spit it back out into your hand. Lift both hands up, so that the hand holding the bubblegum, which we will call the "pop" hand, is facing the hand that is still holding the rocks, now known as the "punk" hand. Now, smush both palms together, kneading the substances together until you get a pink, gritty, spongy, dirty, sugary, spit-covered mess. Continue to work thoroughly.

Now, do you notice how the concoction feels strange and unnatural, but good in a weird way? It's shamelessly warm, gushy and soft, but with just enough crunch to keep you interested. Pay attention to how, despite the contrasting nature of its component parts, this "pop/punk" slime stays remarkably cohesive, never reverting to its initial element. It's a pretty impressive substance, no? Congratulations, you've just had the Mr. T Experience in the controlled environment of your own home.

Dr. Frank, the main musical force behind pop-punk trailblazers the Mr. T Experience, apparently still works under the philosophy that if you clumsily smash two complete opposites together, something new and cool must come out of it. Well, it's good to know that some stick to their guns, because during their long career, mixing punk rock punch with pop music fluff is what the Mr. T Experience has always done best. Through album after album, the band has consistently crafted songs that are as hummable as any Elton John tune, while still keeping a mild, Billy Idol-ish sneer firmly affixed to its collective upper lip. In the case of Alcatraz, their latest release, these elements of punk rock snottiness versus sweet pop songwriting is blended together with a smoothness that the Mr. T Experience has not achieved before. Never has the band's trademark lyrical venom (usually directed at the topic of bad relationships, or people that band simply doesn't like) been so sharp, while its songwriting remained so lively and cheerful. Mix all of this together with the band's newfound musical depth, using brass instruments, keyboards, organs and other assorted instruments to move beyond the simple three-chord, minute- and- fifteen- second pop blowouts of their youth, creating longer, more intricate songs, and Alcatraz becomes one of the strongest albums of the band's extensive catalogue.

The opening track, "I Wrote A Book About Rock and Roll," is sure to be a song that features prominently in any review of Alcatraz. This isn't just because it's one of the album's standout tracks (even though it is, summing up the band's new maturity in three bouncy, harmony filled minutes), but because any music critic with an ounce of self-esteem is going to shit their pants when they read the song's lyrics. Taking aim at phony music critics (and aren't we all?), the Mr. T Experience produces one of the smartest "you suck" songs in recent history, proceeding to piss off an entire group of people in one smooth stroke, while singing "la la la" infectiously the whole time. More so than any other song on the album, this song sums up everything that is Alcatraz: clever and pissy lyrics ("I know words like 'sobriquet' / 'malaise' and 'plutocrat' / I compare the Shaggs to Wittgenstein-- / how cool is that?"), boy-band harmonies and a serious bounce that makes the music impossible to hate.

Continuing the pattern, the third track on the album, "Self Pity," is a nasty criticism of teen-angst brooding, yet jangles happily along with an upbeat 50's rock sound, mixing what amounts to mean-as-shit lyrics with more pretty harmonies and peppy guitar parts. This same trick is used more or less on every song with varying effectiveness. "Naomi," a song about celebrity phoniness, is another excellent track, as the band works a trumpet into their sound, infusing the already upbeat music with an almost swing jazz feel. On "Tomorrow is a Harsh Mistress," Dr. Frank sings about how our own emotional defenses can push those we love away, but he does it to "What I Like About You"-style 80's-radio rock music. As strange as it sounds, this contrast works on all but a few of the album's tracks.

However, the bands signature sound, their greatest strength, sometimes comes back to bite them in the ass. Near the end of the album, either due to actual declining quality or simple overexposure to the Mr. T Experience sound, some of the later tracks fall a little flat. By track nine or ten, the listener generally gets the "experience" and stops wondering "Gee, how will this next song sound?", and instead asks, "Where the hell did I leave my Pringles?" Simply put, the Mr. T sound, no matter how catchy it is, is so specific that only so much can be done with it. After listening to it for too long the music becomes a little stale, a little predictable and a little lacking in intensity, simply because we've heard it all before. Although an encyclopedia of variety compared to other MTX albums, Alcatraz also suffers from classic pop-punk problems that become an issue after just three or four songs.

Every pop punk band currently playing a in garage somewhere has stolen from the Mr. T Experience at least once, and with Alcatraz added to its list of accomplishments, the band had better get used to it. In three or four years, whole new legions of pop-punksters will be mimicking the more mature sound and accomplishments of this latest album. Whether it's their skewed attitude towards life, their efforts to actually craft pop-smart songs, or the way the band can smile kindly while they're kicking you in the nuts, their style has been copped time and time again by many a lesser band-- and, if they continue to produce respectable product like Alcatraz, the theft will only continue. The Mr. T Experience has a very specific niche in the rock ecosystem, bridging the very large gap between music that makes you want to punch a cop and music that makes you want to whistle, and no pretender can fill it quite like they do.

-Steven Byrd