Sweet Sweetness indeed! Usually an album title doesn’t give much insight to the music contained within its contents, but in this case New York City’s Tiny Animals bring the sugar with their debut album. Unfortunately, it lacks the spice but does come through with everything that is “nice.” The 12 tracks featured on this album are highly polished and over-produced in their sound, giving the album a very plastic feel. The effects laid over the vocals of Chris Howerton makes him sound like Weird Al Yankovic (no joke). Musically, the material presented is very straight forward in its structure. They definitely stayed within the lines and refrained from any musical improvisation or exploration. This gives the album a simple and safe feel; safe for mainstream acceptance. Lyrically, there isn’t much depth here; a lot of teen angst and stories of growing pains. They do strip down the super-pop sound with the string driven song “Avalanche”, a moment that provides some flesh to this very synthetic album. If you are a fan of pop rock genre, you might want to check these guys out. As for me, my musical sweet tooth can only take so much manufactured material.

(North Street Records, 88 E. 3rd St. Suite #1, New York, NY 10003)