Hothouse Flowers - Songs From The Rain CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

People, that great expectations can kill a band. Heralded as that year's answer to U2, the group raised superstar hopes that withered, an unfair burden for singer-songwriter-keyboardist Liam O'Maonlai, whose hippieish charm hardly mirrored that of the more arenafriendly Bono.

Rain, however, is a strange baptism for a band that should make no apologies for its guileless faith in a higher order. Slickly produced by Stewart Levine, the album is chock-full of barnstormers, from the breathy wail of "Stand Beside Me" to the self-conscious revival meeting "This Is It (Your Soul)." Yet O'Maonlai's fluffy lyrics and guitarist Fiachna O'Braonain's theatrical solos are overzealous. Rain gallops ahead with a grandiosity that tramples the eccentricity and Celtic flavors that characterized the Flowers' previous two albums. Only when the Flowers take a deep breath and relax, as in the gentle lullaby "Your Nature," is the inner beauty of the band resurrected.

Like Simple Minds, another spiritually inspired act that succumbed to bombast, Hothouse Flowers seem unsure how to express their religiosity without alienating a potential new audience. But O'Maonlai and company have stumbled upon the wrong choice for their salvation. Wandering along the white man's road to gospel with no clear sense of direction, Songs From the Rain is full of fire but ultimately devoid of heart. (RS 657)

KARA MANNING