Songs From the Rain
Hothouse Flowers were still busking on the streets of Dublin when Bono saw them on Irish TV in 1986. He arranged for the young band to release its first single on U2's custom label, Mother Records, and the band's first two albums, 1988'sPeopleand 1990'sHome, were successes in Europe and Australia even if they didn't make much headway in North America. After three years of global touring and songwriting, Hothouse Flowers releasedSongs from the Rain. They fall short again. Lead singer Liam O'Maonlai has an attractive tenor but it lacks Bono's siren edge, and O'Maonlai's delivery is too bland and ordinary to compensate. O'Maonlai's bandmates write Celtic-rock anthems with the requisite soaring melodies and galloping rhythms and hymns with the expected mystic imagery and lush harmonies, but it's all a bit too formulaic and humdrum to make much of an impression. Worst of all are the band's lyrics, whose soft-headed solipsism is obvious in lines like, "If you take the time to listen, there's a chance you will meet your soul" or "Let doubt be the furthest from our minds, so we can continue to be and know that we should be here." On this new album, Hothouse Flowers sound very little like the U2 of 1993 and too much like Firefall, Colorado's mellow-rockers of 1976.-- Geoffrey Himes