Reel Big Fish Embraces Its Own Silliness in El Rey Show

Reel Big Fish is not to be taken seriously. Which is no accident, and is maybe the point. At its performance at the El Rey Theatre on Saturday, there was nothing to suggest the band would have it any other way.

Every pop band needs a purpose, and for this Orange County-based combo it seems to be a flurry of songs about cute girls, being cool and playing in a rock band. Nothing new there. It’s silly, campy, goofy stuff, set against music that’s indistinguishable from that of the rest of this decade’s fading crowd of pop-ska acts.

On the second of its two nights at the El Rey, Reel Big Fish at least was primed to have a good time. Like the band’s relentlessly upbeat music, singer-guitarist Aaron Barrett seemed ready for his own Saturday morning cartoon show.

The band has enjoyed some success on the modern-rock airwaves, earning a gold record for 1997’s “Turn the Radio Off” album. And the septet could be a tight unit, as it showed when it turned Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” into a jazzy lounge number. The song also included a short drum solo and another kind of solo that had Barrett spanking himself repeatedly over the microphone.

Which is about all anyone should expect from Reel Big Fish. The music isn’t particularly memorable, so who can blame them for resorting to endless cheap jokes and slapstick?