Good Morning Beautiful

The fourth album of this fine Toronto-area group, the brainchild of Jose Contreras, is a blueprint for how to make effective, feel-good rock & roll. Despite the fact music and lyrical content could be deemed to be eco-friendly at times, it still manages to take all the aspects of classic rock and fuse them into an instantly lovable whole. One of the highlights is "Hugger of Trees," a keyboard- and percussion-led song in the same vein as the Who in their heyday. The raunchy rock of "Supernatural" or the infectious riffs in "Stella Heart Ocean" engulf the senses and are unrelenting in their hum-ability. If there is any fault with the album, it could be "Kick This Bummer," which seems to stagnate in the middle and travels into a Neil Young culmination. Add to this the ballad-like songs which bookend the album and you find yourself with a trendless, timeless classic rock and pop album. Jason MacNeil.