Genre-Hopping Smash Mouth’s Deft Recycling

Everyone who’s heard Smash Mouth’s 1997 hit “Walkin’ on the Sun” knows that the band can make Farfisa-driven garage-pop for mall rats, but it’s capable of far more, as it demonstrated at Cal State Long Beach’s Pyramid arena on Tuesday.

It almost seems as if the San Jose quintet has assimilated every musical fad of the decade and slammed them all together using its wit as the mortar. Smash Mouth knows what makes a crowd go buck-wild, so it’s fashioned a sound that pushes the right musical buttons at the right times.

At the Pyramid, the band kicked off its set with “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby,” one of the ubiquitous radio hits from its new album, “Astro Lounge.” A spiritual cousin to “Walkin’ on the Sun,” “Can’t Get Enough” is a slinky slice of retro-camp. But then the band launched into a few hard-core numbers that hinted at childhoods spent listening to old Fugazi records.

From there, Smash Mouth started genre-hopping, flashing some caffeinated ska-pop at the crowd, then performing straight-up versions of House of Pain’s “Jump Around” (a song that’s become the hip-hop anthem of the late ‘90s) and Van Halen’s “Running With the Devil.” There were a few numbers that echoed the lounge-rock of “Walkin’ on the Sun” and a couple of punk-pop tunes that would have done the Buzzcocks proud. At a time when bands think of narrowcasting as the one true way, Smash Mouth is proud to rock outside of the box.