Goo Goo Dolls: Dizzy Up The Girl

Here's a trick trivia question. Q: Where are the members of Goo Goo Dolls from A: Buffalo, New York, not Minneapolis. It's easy to get mixed up; the band sounds so much like late-period Replacements, you'd think it came from the same scene, if not the same womb. It's easy to bash Goo Goo Dolls based on those well-publicized similarities, but the band's albums have been far more consistent than Paul Westerberg's in recent years. Dominated by jangly guitars and bloated, shimmery choruses, albums like A Boy Named Goo (with its smash ballad, "Name") and the new Dizzy Up The Girl (with its smash ballad, "Iris," from the City Of Angels soundtrack) are stocked from beginning to end with catchy radio singles. Like its predecessor, Dizzy Up The Girl will likely yield multiple hits, from the "Iris"-style ballad "Black Balloon" to such glossy verse-chorus-verse rockers as "Dizzy," "Slide," "Bullet Proof," and "All Eyes On Me." As always, the new record (the band's sixth) is weaker on the three tracks featuring lead vocals by raspy-voiced bassist Robby Takac ("January Friend," "Amigone," "Full Forever") than on the songs built around earnest frontman John Rzeznik. But there's enough anthemic polish on Dizzy Up The Girl to keep it consistently suitable for long-term car-radio airplay.