TLC: Fanmail

TLC's most recent album—the 1994 breakthrough Crazysexycool, a collection of laid-back R&B songs that showcase a warm, mature group—sold 10 million copies and earned accolades from countless critics eager to use the three adjectives in the album's title to describe either the album itself or one of TLC's three members. Let's see, there's, uh, Left Eye, the sassy one who solidified her standing as the Ray Combs of rap music by burning down her boyfriend's house and hosting a forgettable MTV talent show. Then there's T-Boz and Chilli, one of whom had producer Dallas Austin's child in the downtime between Crazysexycool and Fanmail, and one of whom had a nondescript role in Hype Williams' batshit-crazy gangsta epic Belly. Sadly, no one in TLC distinguishes herself on the group's new album. While it has its moments, primarily due to head producer and songwriter Austin, it's very much a producer and songwriter's album. And, sadly, many of the songwriters involved (Babyface, Jermaine Dupri, musical antichrist Diane Warren) seem to have given TLC mere table scraps of songs that sound depressingly interchangeable with everything else they've ever written. Fanmail at least begins on an interesting note, with the first several songs moving away from the warmer, more organic sound of Crazysexycool and toward a more slippery, cold, distinctly mechanical sort of funk that owes an awful lot to Timbaland and Missy Elliott's groundbreaking recent work. One of the record's best songs, "Silly Ho," is a virtual rewrite of the Timbaland-produced Aaliyah hit "Are You That Somebody," right down to the nearly subliminal squeals that punctuate the instrumental track. The album's first song, "Fanmail," is another promising false start, with its warm, keeningly romantic vocals set against a chilly, inorganic rhythm track. Such highlights are few and far between, however, as TLC mostly goes through the motions on uniformly bland ballads by Babyface and Warren, as well as a long stretch of uninspired Austin songs. Fanmail probably won't disappoint TLC's fans—especially since the group has, after all, dedicated the album to them—but this unremarkable new album probably won't win them many more.