Review Summary: 5 good, 6 bad
Sugar Ray's self-titled album is their fourth, and it shows the band further embracing the mainstream pop-rock sound that they adopted on their previous album,
14:59. Having begun their career playing nu-metal, a genre they were not good at, they eventually grasped onto a softer and more accessible sound after the success of their early single
Fly. This style consists of simple but catchy songwriting done with both electric and acoustic guitars, and lyrics almost exclusively about relationships. Although there is consistency of style throughout Sugar Ray's self-titled album, the quality of the songs varies greatly.
The first two tracks,
Answer the Phone and
When It's Over, are the most popular singles from album, and they give it a strong start. Despite the album being almost two decades old now, I still hear these two songs frequently on the radio or at the supermarket, and without surprise. These songs – the former about reconnecting with a lover (or friend with benefits), and the latter about missing someone you've just gotten out of a relationship with – are very relatable and infinitely catchy. The track that follows these two,
Under the Sun, was apparently also a single. A hopelessly cliché song about nostalgia for the 80's, the song does nothing to spark my interest either musically nor lyrically.
From here on out, it becomes evident that Sugar Ray wants to disperse the few heavier songs throughout the more acoustic based tracks that make up the majority. I don't know if it's my own bias as a metalhead or if others would agree, but the heavier songs, which are the ones where the electric guitars are used either during the chorus or throughout the whole song, are of much higher quality both songwriting-wise and lyrically than the strictly acoustic ones. There is a string of three of these acoustic tracks toward the end (
Stay On though
Just a Little) where Mark McGrath (the lead vocalist) sounds almost bored as he sings overtop of unvarying chord progressions of stagnant tempo. Thankfully, the album is somewhat salvaged at the end with
Disasterpiece, where Mark and Rodney plug their guitars back in, and chant
All over the world / She's that kind of Girl! while playing some upbeat riffs.
The other two songs on the album that I like are
Satellites and
Sorry Now, both of which are bangers that could have (perhaps should have) been singles in place of
Ours and
Under the Sun. I don't doubt that there are people who prefer the softer songs on the album, and I commend Sugar Ray for attempting this variety, whether any individual listener thinks they succeeded or failed at it. To conclude, I want to point out that while none of the musicianship on
Sugar Ray is overly notable, the band excels at the one thing that all pop-rock bands are supposed to do, which is being catchy as hell.
