| The last time we heard from Gidget's Ga-Ga, their
single, "Picture on the Radio" impressed me as tolerable, radio-friendly pop
just waiting to be improved upon. And their dark, witty, satiric song "Belmont"
gave Gidget's Ga-Ga an edge over alterna-pop darlings like Third Eye Blind. In fact,
I can still recollect and hum the tune to "Belmont," which is saying something,
being it was a track I reviewed almost half a year ago. However, things have gone down
hill since then.
Listening to the latest release from Gidget's Ga-Ga,
I am reminded of fellow Midwesterners the Verve Pipe. Both bands, while crafting
hummable tunes from a series of whiny guitar riffs and sighing husky male vocals, fail to
deliver anything original just lately. Gidget's Ga-Ga's song "Lullaby"
thrives on rhyming lyrics, whispered to a female lover who is asked to stay forever.
"Lullaby" sounds similar to "Belmont", albeit more lighthearted.
Unfortunately somewhere in the space between the two songs Gidget's Ga-Ga seems to
have lost that biting sarcasm that once made them so interesting. The guitar and bass
riffs are stale and flat. They echo the eternal jangle of another alternapop commercial
stuck somewhere in the FM frequencies between 94.7 and 101.1.
"Offer You Can't Refuse" at its best evokes the
poppiest R.E.M., but in actuality it sounds more like a mid-90's television show theme
song. It's easy to imagine chicks in baby tees bopping around to the Gin Blossoms while
listening to this one. This is unfortunate! Because in all actuality I thought
Gidget's Ga-Ga was well on their way to pushing the alternative pop genre forward instead
of back through time. Perhaps this was the goal of Gidget's Ga-Ga this time around,
but why? Maybe I'm in the dark here, waiting to be enlightened, but why is it such
obviously talented song writers squander their energy trying to recreate the sound of
other big-time label darlings like the Goo Goo Dolls? Far be it for me to criticize
some of the most popular music on the radio, but I don't even think those label darling
bands are that great. Before, Gidget's Ga-Ga was better than these bands. Now it seems
like they're playing to their level.
For instance, "Sanctuary," rather than having an
edge over just about every band on the American Pie soundtrack, sounds like a Third Eye
Blind song. And the last song on the 4-track CD advance, "Streetwalker," is cute
and upbeat in contrast to its title. However it isn't cute and upbeat in the way
upbeat Smiths songs musically betrayed their depressing lyrics. "Streetwalker"
instead is a song about a girl with pink hair and rockstar ambitions that, you guessed it,
the singer fell in love with. Nothing ironic here.
If, in the race to be popular, Gidget's Ga-Ga finds it
necessary to produce mediocre pop (and maybe fans of Third Eye Blind and Sugar Ray will
really like this), then they're doing an okay job. But in this reviewer's opinion, they'd
do a much better job if they let a little darkness back into their music. Their songs
could benefit from deeper levels, and perhaps some moodiness that could carry them a long
way, perhaps not in the charts, but who cares about the charts anyway?
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