Jam or Soundgarden, and neither of those acclaimed acts has a sex song as flat-out rocking as Collective Soul's "Gel."

And as for Candlebox, you would've fallen for their bittersweet 1994 power ballad, "Far Behind," if you were in junior high, too. A girl's fair-weather friends let her life fall apart, her boyfriend can't bear to watch her suffer, so they all leave each other far behind. The guitar solo twists up, up, up, and Kevin Martin's singing climaxes by evolving into Axl Rose.

Like the summer hit "Molly," by the Detroit grunge-bandwagon band Sponge, "Far Behind" is basically about (in Sponge's poetic words) "16 candles down the drain." That explains what a candlebox is for, unless maybe a candlebox is the cigarette lighter you hold up when the band plays "Far Behind" live. The ballad blew away all the overweight midtempo slop on Candlebox's multiplatinum debut CD. But on the follow-up, Lucy, the band is smart enough to avoid angst-stomped sludge in favor of upbeat vigor and melodies and words that dare to be immature.

"Best Friend," a song hopped up by a guitar riff from the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" that may perhaps even be about a dog (note its title), sounds down-right happy. "Bothered" has a concise, funky forward charge, and both "Understanding" and "Amazing" refer to kids being pushed around. Martin can do more than just bellow, and Peter Klett's guitar knits itself into tasty swirling webs of jazz and psychedelic blues. Too many cuts still trudge along like a dying rhinoceros. Frankly, this band's problem is that they're not quite haircut metal enough. They may not have the guts to pull it off, but what Candlebox really ought to do is forget about grunge credibility entirely and just settle once and for all on being the new Warrant. (RS 720)

CHUCK EDDY