Should the Goo Goo Dolls self-destruct tomorrow, the epitaph would probably read 'Diligence' rather than 'Intelligence'.
Their story is about earnestness: three young men who whiled away their youth rocking empty venues and braving the stares of indifferent onlookers. They took nine years to win over their fellow Americans.
Their persistence makes you want to heap at least a little praise on their work.
But with the quality on show on Dizzy Up The Girl, it is a tough task to be even charitable. The sound is so much deja vu.
Including here their breakthrough hit in 1993, Name, is not a very good idea: the breezy number is mediocre guitar-pop fodder, with unimaginative lyrical twists - hardly stuff that would propel a band from decade-long obscurity to stardom.
The Dolls are a perfect specimen of a contemporary American rock group in that their creative mind-set is binary: their material is either churning guitar benders (the grinding opener Dizzy being the most listenable of the lot) or supposedly sensitive ballads.
