The bounciness of went penalized in the days of and . "Optimism -- yuck." 's stylistic hopscotch and wide-eyed sunnyness might have translated better in the late '90s, had he stuck with that program for his later band, . If the band had set their sights on one or two areas of their record collections for inspiration instead of darn near everything, might not have been so out of place when it was released. Bold indeed, the expanded version of (issued by with four bonus tracks) veers from every angle of '70s AM soft rock, stylish soul pop a la (but not as effective), / , and Brazilian jazz. You can imagine singing the chorus of ; the non-album single veers dangerously close to muzak, and the steel drum-and-trumpet combos were more than enough to incite gagging from the pop underground. Too bad. Like the following , wasn't able to succeed on the charts, so the too varied and too happy were left in limbo. For all its faults, the band's debut isn't half bad, and it doesn't sound horribly outdated decades later. ~ Andy Kellman