Armed with three chords and the truth, certain bands have the ability to reinvent rock music, invigorating tired riffs and rhythms with freshness of spirit. Velvet Crush would like to be such an outfit, bringing modern listeners the sweet sounds of the '60s guitar pop that fueled the band's youthful daydreams.

In actuality, the inspiration for Velvet Crush's second album, Teenage Symphonies to God, originates two steps removed from the primary source. The trio (Ric Menck, Jeffery Borchardt and Paul Chastain) came of age not during the reign of Lennon-McCartney but in the relative obscurity of Big Star, themselves interpreters of a melody-drenched past.

While Velvet Crush have no problems crafting such catchy major-key, tambourine-shaking testaments to heartfelt longing as "Hold Me Up," the group ultimately suffers from sonic myopia. In their all-encompassing pursuit of their heroes' styles, Velvet Crush overlook the innovations introduced by bands like the Beatles and the Byrds. This is especially disconcerting because the group's 1991 debut, In the Presence of Greatness, was an edgy, adventurous disc, brimming with squirrelly guitar lines that sounded like a claustrophobic trapped in a coffee can. Symphonies comes across as its predecessor's stoned and less motivated older brother. The requisitely ethereal dream-cloud imagery of "Star Trip" and the hand-me-down harmonies of "Weird Summer" fall short of the giddy expectations generated by their titles. The band has lost the bite that would transform this music into a reappraisal of earlier tunes.

Guitar magic surfaces on the spiraling "Atmosphere," which matches the urgency of any of the group's songs, and on "Something's Gotta Give," written by Matthew Sweet, which tosses practicality in favor of a three-minute improvisation.

Whereas like-minded contemporaries Teenage Fanclub perform their retro pop with a knowing, tongue-in-cheekiness, and Sweet (co-producer of In the Presence) piles strange textures on his sugary foundations, Velvet Crush's studied naiveté prohibits them from attaining genius. They seem so awed by their idols that they no longer attempt to surpass them. (RS 696)

GREG ZINMAN