Sugar Ray Still Tastes Sweet

Two of Five Stars

So Mark McGrath and his band of merry musicians took a break from working the Candies ad campaign and serving as guest hosts on MTV to release another album, Sugar Ray.

The self-titled release, the band's fourth, carries on with the formula that helped keep the band afloat after their breakout hit, "Fly" in 1998. Their original mixture of acoustic guitar riffs courtesy of Rodney Sheppard and Stan Frazier and the scratching beats of DJ Homicide make for an earful of unconventional sounds coexisting in harmony.

The main guitar lick of "When It's Over," the album's first single, is not as catchy as the licks found in "Every Morning" and "Someday," but its similarity to these tracks should guarantee it will please Mark McGrath fans (Who's really a fan of Sugar Ray the band, anyway?).

Acoustic guitar, in fact, appears on nearly every song on the album. What makes the songs interesting is that acoustic guitar and turntables scratching do not usually belong together in conventional music. Sugar Ray's combination of the two makes for incredibly original music.

With acoustic guitar as the foundation, Sugar Ray runs the gamut of musical styles on their new release.

"Stay On" features Nick Hexum of 311 rocking to a reggae tune that could just as easily be a 311 song featuring Mark McGrath. McGrath and Hexum flow off of each other so well that you can't keep your head from bobbing to the beat and laid back lyrics.

A pedal steel guitar (think line dancing and 10-gallon hats), combined with a rollicking country/western bassline, is featured on "Just A Little," a song about a love leaving the singer lonesome and blue.

"Disasterpiece" features a guitar riff reminiscent of a lost Rolling Stones party song plus a Matthew Sweet-like twist to the lyrics and singing style. Sheppard and Frazier step in with harmonious "Ahhhs" during the chorus to back up McGrath's singing.

Though Sugar Ray flirts with multiple musical styles, don't be alarmed - the songs and lyrics are still elementary at best. Luckily, Sugar Ray's members know their place - no one on this album is trying to be the Bob Dylan of the TRL generation. Thank God.

Sugar Ray has not managed to grow musically or offer anything engaging to the listener apart from songs that will thrive with teenyboppers nationwide.

If anything, this album takes a step back lyrically from 14:59. Where songs like "Someday" and "Falls Apart" tell stories of love and love lost, many of the love songs on Sugar Ray sound as though the rhymes were pulled from a children's book.

"I'll always remember Run DMC/ And all the good times/ That we had on the beach," are the lyrics just before the first chorus of "Under The Sun." These lyrics sound too much like the band LFO ("I like girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch/ Chinese food makes me sick"), who were contributing writers to the track. The reason this album will not fail, however, is because every song is just too catchy not to be eaten up by every teen-ager in the country. MTV and TRL airplay is guaranteed.

If you are listening to the album, you can't help but sing along with the sing-along chorus. And yes, every song has a sing-along chorus.

It's pop music, after all.

Jonathan Miller can be reached at jlmiller@email.unc.edu.