Rooney: Calling The World : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Four years ago, the debut from these L.A. boys earned loads of Weezer comparisons and blew up a little, thanks partly to O.C. exposure. Rooney's second album owes as much to Seventies keyboard-driven radio rock (think ELO and Styx) as Weezer, and it's even more hook-slathered and fetchingly tuneful than the first. At worst, this means blandness - a couple of cuts, including the arena-size "Paralyzed" and "Believe in Me," a pep talk to a bummed-out buddy, are as risk-free as a T.G.I. Friday's. But the band's adeptness at constructing tunes and recycling classic sounds keeps Calling the World from being a zone-out. "All in Your Head" and "I Shoulda Been After Your Little Girl," in which smooth-voiced frontman Robert Schwartzman plays the heartbroken lover man, could brighten a road trip, if not the Top Forty.