Goo Goo Dolls: no rush and no fuss

Listeners of different ages and from different countries know perfectly Goo Goo Dolls; but the band, too, know them perfectly well. There is no doubt about that. The US-based trio was assembled twenty five years ago, and since then, these people have always known what the audience wants, giving the public what is most anticipated. Goo Goo Dolls were smart enough to quickly understand what they missed in the music they started their journey with. Leaving the rock-foundation intact, they purified the sounding, improved the melodiousness and added on romantics. Acting like that, they were preparing their jump for several years to finally give their best shot and gain all the fame in the nineties. Now, slightly slowed down by the age, they do not rush, but do everything precisely, thoroughly and skillfully to make each of their following long player a long anticipated and desired event. Since 1998, the time distance between their studio works has constantly been four years. This is how much time passed after the release Let Love In (2006) before Goo Goo Dolls delivered Something For The Rest Of Us.

No surprises, only nice music

Something For The Rest Of Us is one more collection of ballad material and light rock-music songs without noisy drums or breakneck speeds. And once again, the best tracks are those that are the slowest ones, specifically One Night, Soldier, and Notborken. While some one is stringing on the band for placing all of these songs on one and the same structure of calm intros building up to loud soulful choruses, you have to admit that this does work: you want to listen to it over and over again. The words are simple and crawl deep into your head even if you do not want them to. There are also upbeat tracks which can easily ignite the viewers at a concert, for instance Sweet Lie, or Say You’re Free. At the same time, there is nothing extraordinary that the musicians offer here. They seem to be doing a routine job and enjoying the process. From the point of view of instrumental craftsmanship and song-writing surprises, there is only one song of interest, and that is the single Home. In it, instruments, just like theater actors, do not appear all at once, but go come up one after another, first guitar, then keys and drums in the end.

Probated methods and high results

The new album from Goo Goo Dolls was under preparation for about two years, and the musicians cooperated with well-established producers who had worked with Green Day and U2 before. This is already studio work number nine; and it hardly looks like this is the last one because the American ensemble seems capable enough to release more than one record of analogous nature. Indeed, these three stay away from experiments and prefer to apply time-tested methods. And the result is that you are not going to find any bad song on Something For The Rest Of Us, which is the same for the majority of the other albums. Goo Goo Dolls came out with a very smooth record without evident drawbacks. The only thing to tarnish the entire work is that the musicians are too much keen on ballad music. The new album has more slow songs than fast songs, which can make some think of it as a dragged-out effort. On the other hand, singing out loud to the choruses and clapping to the verses, you will not notice the moment you start playing the CD once more.

Alex Bartholomew
13.09.2010