The Goo Goo Dolls have entered a Los Angeles studio to begin production on their seventh full-length album and first of all-new material since 1998's Dizzy Up the Girl. Tentatively titled "Gutterflowers," the album will be produced by Rob Cavallo, whose work includes Green Day and Tricky as well as the Goos' 1995 breakthrough, A Boy Named Goo. The band plans to track twelve fresh numbers for the new album and release it later this year.

Main Goo guy Johnny Rzeznik will also make his solo debut sometime in 2002 when Disney releases Treasure Planet. The singer has written two tracks for the forthcoming animated flick, a sci-fi rethinking of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" set in deep space and featuring the voices of David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short and Jack Palance.

Just two months ago, the Goos released What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce, a collection of album tracks spanning from their humble, Buffalo punk rock beginnings in the late Eighties through their pop-ballad mega-stardom phase of the late Nineties.

GREG HELLER
(August 1, 2001)