Classic Rock

May’02

Emotional rescue

The members of the Goo Goo Dolls finally have some angst and upset to mix into their heart-felt power pop. And hormonal outrage could prove the making of them.

Goo Goo Dolls
'Gutterflower'
(Warner Bros)

In the four years since 'Dizzy Up The Girl', Goo Goo Dolls singer/guitarist Johnny
Rzeznik has gone through the kind of emotional upheaval that the band have often attempted to conjure with through their songs. While bassist and founder member Robby Takac got married last year, Rzeznik saw his marriage break up. And even though the finality of divorce was his choice, he's still suffering from the dissolution of his marriage, and with 'Gutterflower' quite publicly so.

Heartache is nothing new to the Goo Goo Dolls or Rzeznik (who splits songwriting roughly 60/40 with Takac), his muse is often a forlorn one; the band's long-overdue breakthrough hit 'Name' was a broken-down lament, unashamedly naked in its longing and regret.

'Gutterflower', then, should by its very definition be the band laid splendidly bare, with Rzeznik artistically busted up and bleeding. The notion that great art is borne of suffering is partially true, but the idea tends to discount every horrible summation of star-crossed love that comes crawling from most albums about three songs in. The world is cursed with love songs, and for the most part they're tragic - but not in the right way.

Since the Goo Goo Dolls shook off their punk inflections around the time of their third album, 1990's 'Hold Me Up', broken romance has long been their currency. Which is not to suggest they're a one-trick pony; they've displayed both acuity and nuance, clever metaphor and a heartfelt zeal that's lifted them beyond obvious cliche. And although teaming up with Replacements songwriter Paul Westerberg for
'We Are The Normal', from 1993's 'Superstar Car Wash', did show up their shortcomings, it only made their then youthful and brash approach that much more appealing. Westerberg was dealing with the inane nature of normality, celebrating it in a way. The Goo Goo Dolls wanted a six-pack and a reassuringly and friendly touch, preferably female. It's a great album almost in spite of itself: charming, human and honest enough.

By the time of 1995's 'A Boy Named Goo', maturity and an almost intolerable amount of time spent on tour had remade them again. Johnny Rzeznik the rock pin-up was still some way off. The album was tough-sounding and uncompromising, but wonderfully dense and full of songs. 'Name' would break it and also them, but it was just one of 13 songs with body and passion. Admittedly 'Slave Girl' was as dumb as a truck, but the band were probably drunk when they wrote it.

Three years later, 'Dizzy Up The Girl' compounded the notion that the three-piece would never have to work again. Multimillion-selling in roughly the same number of places that there's a Holiday Inn, 'Dizzy...' sold steadily for over two years on the back of singles such as 'Iris', 'Slide' (the only song you could hear on the radio in America for about four solid months, it seemed) and 'Black Balloon'. The band were rightly lauded, but it sometimes sounded as if their best work was behind them. 'Dizzy...' was awash with heartache and a longing for solace, but in parts it sounded sanitised and had an occasional nagging ring to it. When the UK label tagged 'Name' on to the end of it to help accentuate sales, it dragged the rest of it down, making its brawling finale, 'Hate This Place', absolutely redundant.

Since then, there's been last year's revamped best of, 'Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce', not so much a collection of hits (they've only had a handful) as an excellent overview of a career that started in Buffalo, New York, in 1985.

After all this time they're still unlikely rock stars; it must still come as a surprise to them. In interviews they talk of persisting in doing what they do, which might sound like empty rhetoric from other bands, but let's remember; the Goo Goo Dolls spent their formative years, about 10 of them, huddled in their van, plugging away.

When they talk about 'Gutterflower', as they have been recently, they say it's an album of songs about communication or the lack thereof. What they mean is that it's familiar threads and themes readdressed and retold. Admittedly, if anyone bears repetition, it's the Goo Goo Dolls, their weary, doomed ballads lift and fall beautifully. Their pop is uninhibited, infectious, and they sway and rock with admirable bite. And while there's an air of familiarity to the Goo Goo Dolls' music, Rzeznik has dug further inside himself here to keenly-felt effect, especially on 'It's Over' and 'Sympathy'. More complicated when you knew where both songs came from, it's the mark of a true songwriter that he can reveal himself so forcefully and without apparent rancour, but a with resigned hesitancy that is just as compelling.

Now, the Goo Goo Dolls are older, wiser, troubled by circumstance and time, but
ultimately, it seems, a better band for it.

4/5
Philip Wilding