Carolina Liar: Coming to Terms : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

After leaving his native South Carolina in 2002, Carolina Liar frontman Chad Wolf strummed his guitar in many L.A. coffeehouses before being rescued from obscurity by an internship with songwriter Diane Warren and a paid gig dancing in a Celine Dion video. His story is a typical Hollywood fantasy — which might be why four tracks from his band's New Wave-y rock debut have already been featured on The Hills. Fusing the anthemic elements of U2 and the Killers with the electro production of Swedish pop maestro Max Martin, Coming to Terms is like the MTV show's stars: pretty but a little confused. Wolf swings between soul-searching ballads (the gospel-choir-backed "Show Me What I'm Looking For") and spunky guitar rave-ups ("I'm Not Over") with a sensitive-guy outlook that suggests he still hasn't adapted to the L.A. lifestyle. "Did you really think you found somebody/Or did that vodka make you leave with me?" he wonders on "Last Night," bummed out about his one-night stand with a chick who "brags about [her] hits on MySpace." But give the guy some time — in a few years, that girl could be Lauren or Heidi.