**1/2 Goo Goo Dolls

DIZZY UP THE GIRL

(Warner Bros.)

It's easy to resent Buffalo's Goo Goo Dolls for having achieved phenomenal commercial success with a sound that never brought the Replacements anything more than critical acclaim. But then, nobody ever choked under pressure like the Replacements (except, perhaps, Paul Westerberg's hero, Alex Chilton) -- certainly not the more well-adjusted Goo Goo Dolls. And the pressure was surely on this time: having already scored a massive midsummer hit by putting Dizzy's "Iris" on the City of Angels soundtrack, the Goos had to come up with at least one or two more good reasons for fans to buy their sixth album (which, of course, features "Iris"). So singer/guitarist Johnny Rzeznik puts on his best "Here Comes A Regular" voice, which is sounding more and more like Tommy Stinson's Westerberg imitation every album, and croons sentimentally about a "young man sitting in an old man's bar waiting for his turn to die" on the plaintive "Broadway," gets all clumsy and romantic about a girl named May on the hooky "Slide," and then falls for the girl that "a thousand boys could never reach" on the semi-acoustic ballad "Black Balloon" (a string-embellished song aching to be "Aching To Be"). Let's just say that "Iris" fans won't be unsatisfied.

-- Matt Ashare