LFO in Bloomington, MN

To give credit where it's due, the Boston trio known as
LFO
was responsible for much of the writing and production on their debut album. Their voices are almost as good as
the Backstreet Boys
, much better when they're singing choruses together than when they stretch out on solo spots. And those choruses are quite catchy on the single
"Summer Girls,"
"Girl on TV,"
and several other tracks. What sinks
even before any of the choruses, however, is some of the worst faux-rap rhymes ever heard in the music world, aside from the
Rodney Dangerfield
novelty rap single and the occasional K-Mart commercial. Though
"Summer Girls"
has a great hook and nice combo singing, the rhymes -- flagrant offenses include "When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet/Billy
Shakespeare
wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"; "Stayed all summer, then went back home/
Macaulay Culkin
was in
Home Alone
"; and "Fell deep in love but now we ain't speakin'/
Michael J. Fox
was
Alex P. Keaton
" -- are enough to elicit a groan from everyone old enough to remember
Family Ties
. It's the same story on
"Girl on TV"
("Shooby doo wop and Scooby Snacks/Met a fly girl and I can't relax"), and by the time listeners hit the third track, a "soulful" ballad named
"Cross My Heart,"
has lost any possible credibility with post-teen audiences. It's a bit of a shame because the group shines on light bouncy hip-pop like
"Can't Have You"
and
"Baby Be Mine,"
though the latter loses points for being yet another R&B hit to sample the '80s hit
"Human"
by
Human League
. It's encouraging that a (mostly) self-produced teen pop group can make a bit of headway on the charts, but in this case, the trio could have used a bit more studio supervision. ~ Keith Farley