3 out of 5

Produced by: John Wozniak, Jeff Dawson

Label: Woz Records

From their debut and on through their hit and miss followups, something key has remained consistent with Marcy Playground: They sound sure of themselves.  Whether it was the more folkified sounds of that first disc or the grunge and pop variations that followed, Wozniak and crew’s willingness to dabble with and skill at reinvigorating familiar riffs kept the albums very much afloat from track to track, even if any given song’s lasting value was negligible.  And the same holds true here, with a sigh-of-relief return to something somewhat missing on albums two and three: A sense of purpose.

The self-titled release introduced us to Wozniak’s bemusement with childhood through adult eyes, and the interesting thoughts that concept provided him gave the album a bump of urgency which worked well against the group’s doldrums-esque delivery.

But Shapeshifter didn’t have much to add to this and MP3 dropped the pretense for some silly anthemic stuff.  Having navigated through grungey muddles and forced fist-pumps, Wonderland has MP finally just relaxing on trying to discover the Next Great Hook and, as a result, settling into a more realized identity.  And sometimes this shifts eye-rollingly close to an adult contemporary contemporary identity, at album’s start and end, but for the most part – for the bulk of the album, for sure – while maybe it’s no longer necessarily a sound we’d equate to the same band who wrote Sex and Candy, it’s a band past the stardom hump and comfortable in their own skin.  Combined with that already proven penchant for solid songs, the album delivers some of MP’s most rewarding tracks in years, from the Beach Boys-esque Star Baby to the riff-tastic Emperor.  While it’s definitely too bad that this is bookended by some cheese all stuff, as usual those tracks are still well-performed, and I think I’d prefer a great sandwich on white bread over some mundane ham and cheese on the world’s flashiest slices.  That is to say: Wonderland may balance out to a similar average rating as the previous two MP albums, but for the core of its runtime it actually manages to excite and not just distract.  And should the group soldier on, I’d hope they continue to develop some of the great stuff they delivered here, to one day break the three star mold and give is something stunning from start to finish.