G. Love & Special Sauce

G. Love is an intriguing, hiphop-influenced acoustic guitar-toting white bloozeman who hasn't quite reached his full promise, nearly four years after his debut. There, gleeful blurts like "Cold Beverage" and the used-car gripe "Fatman" posited the Philadelphia kid as some kind of post-Beastie Bo Diddley, while more earnest pursuits such as the What's Going On tribute "This Ain't Living" fell right on their poker faces. The grooves worked themselves out more on the follow-up Coast to Coast Motel, but Yeah, It's That Easy, while retaining Love's winningly cheery delivery in spots, doesn't shoot and score quite the way the 76ers he celebrates used to. In fact, "I-76"'s tone is way too ingratiating; placing such a slight number second in the tune stack is a mistake, as well. There's little else here that would have provided needed weight to Yeah's front end, however, so maybe the complaint is moot. In an age when hiphop/rock fusions are front and center—whether Beck's reshufflings or Puff's hilarious remix of "Roxanne" via U.T.F.O.—the Sauce boys have a lot to live up to, and straight-faced anti-crime warnings like "Lay Down the Law" and "Slipped Away (The Ballad of Lauretha Vaird)" just don't get there. Whatever the intent, the would-be soulful wailings on "Lay Down" don't make this thing as true a testament as the first disc's offhand toasts to fermented products.—Rickey Wright