LFO: Life Is Good : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

LFO were boys with humble aspirations on their quickly recorded 1999 debut, coveting mall-wear-clad nymphets and playing scratch-'n-sniff with the TV screen. Two years and several hits later, they've grown up enough to get the girls (most notably lead singer Rich Cronin's aborted affair with Jennifer Love Hewitt), and on Life Is Good they're way less sanguine about love than before. Life Is Good finds Cronin and Company getting schizoid with it, musically and emotionally. Romantic obstacles litter the album - jealous ex-boyfriends on "Alayna," frenetic touring on the banal "28 Days." But deception is the primary culprit. Cronin gets cuckolded on "Dandelion," while over the earnest guitar-pop of "Every Other Time" he does battle with a belligerent girl who "did a doughnut on my lawn, then drove off with one finger in the air." He unexpectedly drops an octave and channels Dave Gahan on the aquatic, synth-pop-y "Erase Her." Cronin might have graduated from boy-band boot camp, but they could find that the good life - like love - can be hard to maintain.

JON CARAMANICA
(RS 872 - July 5, 2001)