The early 2000s were a rough ride for Fastball, the retrophile power-pop trio from Austin, Texas. In a matter of months the group, comprised of Miles Zuniga (vocals, guitar, keys), Tony Scalzo (vocals, bass, guitar, keys) and Joey Shuffield (drums, percussion), went from toast of the town to very nearly toast.

After scoring a pair of massive hits (The Way” and “Out Of My Head”) off their 1998 sophomore album All The Pain Money Can Buy, the threesome followed up with 2000’s The Harsh Light Of Day, an album that was stronger and deeper in nearly every respect—and sold a fraction of its predecessor. Within months Hollywood Records dropped the band, leaving its future very much in question.

It would be four years before Fastball’s fourth album, the cheekily named Keep Your Wig On, would be released by their new label Rykodisc. The bad news was, they were on a smaller label with a one-album deal. The good news was, they kept on making exactly the kind of music they wanted to make, that uniquely Fastball blend of hooky, melodic, British Invasion-influenced guitar rock with clever, frequently self-deprecating lyrics.

“Shortwave” makes for a characteristically quirky opener, a 1:13 overture-slash-homage to the early days of radio, featuring Zuniga and Scalzo harmonizing and guest Jeff Groves on sax. It segues directly into “Lou-ee Lou-ee,” a prototypical Fastball single—energetic, punchy and catchy as hell, complete with singalong chorus and terrific guitar hook. The most complicated thing about it is the title, a callback to the iconic early rock number “Louie Louie”; otherwise it’s Power Pop 101: a toe-tapping rocker with vaguely angsty lyrics.

Scalzo’s “Drifting Away” is a cool concoction, a hybrid of two typical Fastball styles: it’s a dreamy riff-rocker. The lyric about living with uncertainty in a relationship boils things down to this solid advice: “Listen to your heart / It'll tell you where to go.” They lean into the dreaminess on Zuniga’s “Airstream,” an airy, slightly spacy tune about the freedom of life on the road (“When it gets too familiar, I'll be gone”).

Deploying another familiar frame, on “I Get High” they make a piano-based blues the foundation for a tune that morphs steadily from there, this time playing with your expectations by keeping a rein on the tempo most of the time but twice exploding into a sort of pre-chorus rave. In any case, it has a great vibe—like a lot of the best Fastball songs. They’re songs that feel like if you walked into a bar and they were playing, you'd stay and order a drink, even if you knew nothing about the band.

Zuniga’s “Perfect World” features firmly strummed acoustic rhythm guitar as he vents his frustrations with a partner who likes to complain (“I know you think there's a conspiracy to keep you down / It’s all in your head / You gotta learn to tune it out”). Scalzo takes the lead vocal on the heavier “Till I Get It Right,” punctuated by more honking sax from Groves, and then we’re into the burnished opening riff of “Our Misunderstanding.” The latter features unison lead vocals over steady, strummy backing leading to a chorus melody that sticks like superglue on a tune about a relationship that’s growing more distant by the day (“You’re a stranger to me now”).

The final third of the album gets patchier. “Someday” doesn’t leave much of an impression, a White Album pastiche without much meat on its bones. The playful, country-inflected “Mercenary Girl” is a one-joke throwaway telegraphed by the title, though they have fun with it, and the pedal steel is a nice touch. “Falling Upstairs” is one of those moody, downbeat numbers that you typically find near the tail end of a Fastball album, albeit not one of their more memorable ones. “Red Light,” by contrast, is a hoot, a Ritchie Valens-ish matchup of early-rock stuttering back beat and mariachi horns, featuring a dynamic call-and-answer vocal arrangement.

There are really only two surprising elements of this album. First is the number of Zuniga-Scalzo co-writes; before this, they had typically written more individually than together, but here six of the 10 cuts are collaborations between the band’s two singer-songwriters. The second surprise is the production credits; six were co-produced by Mike McCarthy along with some combination of Zuniga and Scalzo, but Jeff Trott (Sheryl Crow) co-produced and played on “Our Misunderstanding,” “Someday” and “Red Light” were produced by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne), and “Drifting Away” was co-produced by Scalzo and Rob Seidenberg. This is surprising because, despite this production-by-committee approach, the album feels seamless; the music is all of a piece and flows smoothly front to back.

Keep Your Wig On didn’t set the world on fire—it would be another five years before the band returned with Little White Lies on Megaforce Records—and it’s not one of Fastball’s best. But even a “pretty good” Fastball album amounts to musical comfort food for a power-pop aficionado, and the presence of standout tracks like “Lou-ee Lou-ee” and “I Get High” makes this one well worth picking up.

Rating: B

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