Dodgy - Free Peace Sweet

6.0 - England - 1996

This third and final effort from the British power pop trio is one of those albums where you have a handful of tracks -- "In A Room", "If You're Thinking Of Me", "Good Enough" -- that are absolutely stellar (and all deservedly hit singles). Seriously, "Good Enough" is like the Platonic ideal of a monster summer jam. Then, you have one or two fairly decent tunes -- "Found You", "Homegrown" -- and then a bunch of crap. Quite a bit of crap, actually, as, at 14 tracks, this album also suffers from being far too long. Bassist-singer Nigel Clark's vocals are kind of weak and the lyrics on this record are quite cringe worthy. A shame, really, as Dodgy are such an immensely likeable band that you desperately want to like the album, but at the end of the day, all you can do is put those 3-5 tracks on repeat and pretend you're at one of those mid-nineties summer festivals.