Entertainment

D-Can't Love, Can't Hurt

(Epic)

SOFT SELL: Epic saw the future when it signed Augustana in 2004. The Illinois-by-way-of-LA band's earnest debut, All the Stars and Boulevards, floundered for a year and a half before the Scrubs-supported ballad "Boston" vaulted it to viability. Augustana's potential was great, and anticipation was palpable for its follow-up. First sign of trouble: Founding guitarist Josiah Rosen abandoned the band to start another just as All the Stars was taking off. Second sign: a wholly unremarkable performance at SXSW in March.

A BUNCH OF SOFTIES: And now this. Can't Love, Can't Hurt is recorded with little reverence for quality – good soft rock needs space to breathe and shift, and compression has sucked away all airiness here. Even worse, Augustana's promising emo-rootsy songwriting has been shelved in favor of cheap-and-easy payoffs: familiar-sounding piano riffs, soaring but banal choruses, Dan Layus' kindly yet timbre-starved voice. The only redeeming moments arrive late as it kicks up a bit of dirt on "Either Way, I'll Break Your Heart Someday" (nice chorus riff) and "Where Love Went Wrong."

BOTTOM LINE: Shameless, winsome, lowest-common- denominator light rock for girls who've left their high-school boyfriends behind to go to college. Mike Daniel

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