Hootie and the Blowfish have a new CD. Someone alert FEMA. Or
better yet, the EPA. I think we’re about to have a Category 5
Mediocricane.
Look, I get it, OK? Hootie and the Blowfish aren’t particularly
a bad band; they just aren’t any better than any one of a thousand
bands out there who didn’t get breaks, didn’t get MTV exposure,
didn’t get to make videos with Dan Patrick. Hootie and the Blowfish
are living proof of one of the axioms of the Saint of Sales, J.R.
“Bob” Dobbs: “It’s better to be lucky than good.” Rather than a
life of garage band wonder in Spartansburg, South Carolina, or
wherever the hell they’re from, they got five minutes of fame. They
can play state fairs for the rest of their life on a double bill
with Swing Out Sister and Glenn Medeiros, being giggled at by drunk
thirty-somethings who are desperately trying to pretend they’re
still in college.
And guess what? All their new CD,
Looking For Lucky, does is perpetuate that streak of
formulaic mediocrity. You still can’t understand a damned thing
Darius Rucker says without a lyric sheet and a competent speech
pathologist. The rest of the band is still vaguely good looking,
vaguely talented, and vaguely in the same key. They don’t really
sing harmony, they just all sing the melody at the same time. The
production and engineering on the CD is OK; the musicianship still
bugs me, since Hootie and the rest of the gang seem to have not
changed the effects pedal on their guitars since, oh, 1991. Wide,
fuzzy, and reverb-laden; it’s like sterilized garage rock,
genetically engineered to appeal to people who drive SUVs.
Oh, and once or twice there’s a mandolin. Wow, is that
ground-breaking or what?
The songs are boring. The lyrics are insipid. I would like to
point out some particular high and low points, but there aren’t
any; it just all dissolves into a beige morass of unchallenging
music.
Looking For Lucky is easy and easily forgotten. This is a CD
designed to be background music at a TGI Friday’s. Only once do
Hootie and his amigos break the mode, for “Leaving” — which
instead of being mediocre mainstream rock is mediocre country rock.
This stuff makes the Eagles look like Morphine.
In the end, this isn’t bad enough to be really notable and isn’t
good enough to waste your time on. Don’t even bother, not even if
it’s in the cutout rack. If you want to know who’s
Looking For Lucky, it’s Hootie, every time he looks in the
mirror. Lucky that they still have a record contract, lucky they
ever had a career.
