People who were digging Goo Goo Dolls back in the early 1990s have grown to find the band they once loved rendered virtually unrecognisable over the past decade or so. The Buffalo, New York, trio, led by John Rzeznik, always had pop smarts, but it took a couple of hit singles for their smarts to be put on full display. At the beginning of their career, they were sort of an agreeably messy pop/rock band, much like their idols, the Replacements (who I discovered, in part, through Goo Goo Dolls). Of course, after the Replacements signed with a major label, their sound underwent a gradual transformation from messy to shiny, and the Goo Goo Dolls have done the same, albeit with significantly more success.
Each album since their 1995 breakthrough, A Boy Named Goo, has sounded cleaner and been more ballad-heavy than the one before it, culminating in their eighth studio record, Let Love In, a fairly decent set of mid-tempo guitar pop that’s likely to be blaring from an Adult Alternative radio station near you every time you turn the dial.