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Goos find an edge / Buffalo news
« on: Aug 31st, 2010, 4:35pm » |
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Goos find an edge
By Jeff Miers
NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC
Published:
August 30 2010, 3:09 PM
Updated: August 31, 2010, 7:53 AM
For their ninth studio album, Goo Goo Dolls John Rzeznik, Robby Takac and Mike Malinin needed to do more than simply coast on past multiformat successes. The band could easily have moved comfortably into the ready-made niche that is often more adult-contemporary graveyard than comfortable demographic fit.
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Goo Goo Dolls
Three stars (Out of four)
Something For the Rest of Us
[Warner Bros.]
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That's a place occupied by bands like the Gin Blossoms and Counting Crows, where immaculately crafted songs routinely have their edges sanded to an annoying smoothness. Folks flock to see these bands still, but mostly just to hear hits from 15 years ago, to relive the past; the idea of them making music that means something in the present tense seems to have been at least partly abandoned.
Happily, there is a tension running through "Something For the Rest Of Us," a sense of unresolved issues. The album is edgy, both in terms of its sonic shape and its lyrics -- a collection of often anthemic alt-rock songs that address what lyricist Rzeznik has called "the emotional uncertainty that accompanies hard times."
The Goos took their time on this go-round, hanging onto the album until they felt fully satisfied with the arc of its progression. During this process, several producers were engaged in co-production with the band, among them Tim Palmer, (U2, Pearl Jam, David Bowie) Butch Vig, (Green Day, Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and John Fields (Paul Westerberg, Jimmy Eat World).
The result could easily have been a collection of songs lacking sonic continuity, a grab-bag of unrelated pieces. Somehow, however, "Something" flows with purpose, moreso than even 2006's multihit effort "Let Love In." Much of the reason for this can be traced to the manner in which the band and its various producers handled the tracking and layering of Rzeznik's guitars. If more recent Goos fare -- say from "Dizzy Up the Girl" forward -- seemed to want to push the six-string element into clearly-defined spaces within the mix, this time around, they run amok, prowling straight through the power-pop majesty of opener "Sweetest Lie" and arriving to add some sting to even the more grandiose ballads in the vein of "Nothing is Real" and "Still Your Song."
The latter of these, in fact, represents a new page in the Goos manual: A dense, nicely orchestrated slab of power-pop, the song still manages to pack real power. It's not unlike one of the ballads on Cheap Trick's recent "The Latest" album, where deftly arranged strings and layered guitars conspire to elevate the song as it progresses toward an emotional crescendo. There's a touch of the Beatles in all of this.
None of which is to suggest that the Goos have turned their back on the fans they've accrued over the past 15 years or so, a period that saw the group evolve from its roughshod, Replacements-on-a-bender beginnings into a hit-making machine, one capable of racking up some 10 million in album sales. Rzeznik still writes concise, fat-free songs that, generally speaking, follow the "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" credo. He's become incredibly adept at penning instantly memorable songs, and "Something For the Rest Of Us" is indeed an album that could reasonably yield six or seven hit singles.
The edginess, though, that unobtrusive but still evident air of disquiet and unease -- this is what makes the band's ninth record exactly the one it needed to deliver as it enters its 25th year as an entity. "Something For the Rest of Us" is an album that honestly reflects the times in which it was conceived and recorded. It's also one of the strongest records in the Goos' canon.
http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/gusto/disc-reviews/article17621 4.ece
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