'Girl' a Strangely Upbeat Torture

DIZZY UP THE GIRL

The Goo Dolls

Warner Bros. Records

Rising like Aphrodite from the sea, one or two songs from film soundtracks inevitably surface as a particular season's Love Song. Be it sentimental (Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" from Armageddon), bitter and/or vengeful (Mary J. Blige's "I'm Not Gonna Cry" from Waiting to Exhale) or, most common of all, composed by Bryan Adams (Robin Hood Prince of Thieves's "Everything I Do [I Do it For You]," Don Juan DeMarco's "[Have You Ever] Really Loved a Woman?"), these Love Songs dominate radio play-lists and often surpass their related movies in popularity. Indeed, how many of last year's senior proms were perfumed by the sweet mourning of the Goo Dolls' "Iris." featured in City of Angels? "And all I can taste is this moment/And all I can breathe is your life"--lyrics such as these, occasionally punctuated by the sad twang of a mandolin, combined to make "Iris" the Love Song of Summer 1998. Perhaps in an attempt to wring the udders of the cash cow for one last drop, the Goo Dolls included "Iris" in their new album, Dizzy Up the Girl. While other bands might fear that such a conspicuous track might trap buyers into assuming that the other songs on the disc were of the same style (how many of you bought Blind Melon in the hopes that every song would be sound like "No Rain?"), John Rzeznik and company confront the supposedly dangerous supposition with shameless affirmation. Yes, they say, every song on this album is (or at least attempts to be) just like "Iris." We hope you like it.

The formula employed by the Goo Dolls to create this album of Love Songs has been to address almost every song to one person, presumably whatever girl is being "dizzied up," and to permeate each line with the same type of dark, tortured, adolescent, I-love-you-why-won't-you-let-me-in infatuation. "I wanna kick at the machine/That made you piss away your dreams/And tear at your defenses/Till there's nothing there but me," declares Rzeznik in "Dizzy," and so on he bellyaches throughout the other 12 songs on the album. "They press their lips against you/And you love the lies they say/And I tried so hard to reach you/But you're falling anyway," Rzeznik sings in "Acoustic #3." What this girl's problems are, beyond the abstractions of lies and betrayal, Rzeznik doesn't disclose, but his lyrics read like a high-school diary. Currently seen glamming it up in the newest issue of Rolling Stone, Rzeznik himself sheds here as well some of the down-home Buffalo boy that got him and his band where they are today. On certain tracks, such as "January Friend," his normally earnest, raspy voice mutates to a synthetic-sounding and nasal scratchiness, reminiscent of a phlegmy Ed Roland. The Goo Dolls, however, are no Collective Soul; Rzeznik here commits the double wrong of choosing the wrong person to imitate and failing to do it accurately.

Musically, the Goo Dolls are your run-of-the-mill mainstream alternative band. Nothing extraordinary is done here in the way of instrumentation, and most songs are similar in their construction and execution--verse, verse, bridge, verse. "Extra Pale" is a brief flash of distinction in the obscurity created by so many homophonic songs with its abrupt pauses and nicely-incorporated backup vocals. Those who might be tired of "Iris" will welcome its mandolin and violins to break up the thickness of guitar, bass and drums characterizing the rest of this album. The strangest quality of the music of Dizzy Up the Girl, however, is just how darn upbeat it is. Most songs move to quick-paced rhythms and, at the chorus, slide up scales for an almost uplifting effect. The music, in fact, tends to belie the plaintiveness of the lyrics. How the Goo Dolls write something so dolorous as, "See the young man sitting/In the old man's bar/Waiting for his turn to die" into a tune so whistleable as "Broadway" is a marvel and, perhaps, the saving grace of this album. One might criticize the hackneyed phrasing, the pretentious lead vocals, and the uncreative musicianship, but the upshot of Dizzy Up the Girl is that its melodies are so memorable and euphonious as to shift attention from the sorrow of which they sing. Isn't that, after all, an optimism that we of the Prozac 90s could use?