“Long Way Home,” the final song on the album, includes a sprightly piano sequence, emphatic drum beats and a familiar return to home - a warm way to round out the album.īoxes is, more than anything, comfortable. The beginning of “Lucky One” sounds like a mashup between a Taylor Swift and a Sam Smith song (I promise, it’s true).

The next two songs, “Reverse” and “Prayer in My Pocket” follow suit. The first lyrics of “Free of Me” - and the way they’re sung in an ever-so-slightly petulant tone - sound unusually similar to Simple Plan. “The Pin” and “Boxes” deal with the less passionate parts of a love story: with the comfort and safety that comes with a love that feels like a home. When the chorus of “Flood” hits, it’s more gentle than you expect, making it much more pleasant and somehow more subtle, despite its obvious love-song-like quality. It would be the kind of fun mindless track you forget you’re actually listening to until it stops, if it weren’t for the chirpy chorus of “Turn it up!” This kind of chirpiness works better later on in a light, dancing piano melody in the song “So Alive.” “Souls in the Machine,” which follows it, picks up the pace a little bit it feels like the antithesis to something like Pink Floyd’s “Brick in the Wall.” However, the album’s first song, “Over and Over,” feels bizarrely too young for this album and The Goo Goo Dolls as a group. As always, frontman John Rzeznik’s voice adds a bit of texture to the song’s sentiments without pulling focus from the song as a whole - which is almost always a good thing.

Boxes reveals a more mellow side to the group. The Goo Goo Dolls’s latest album, Boxes, doesn’t feature anything as poignant or tightly crafted as some of their previous work, but that doesn’t make it any less pleasant to listen to.

Goo goo dolls prayer in my pocket