Hootie & the Blowfish
Fairweather Johnson

Nearly a year has passed since its release, and it's fair to say that Fairweather Johnson has received nowhere near the kind of the attention that met Hootie & the Blowfish's debut Cracked Rear View.  Surprisingly, the music sounds remarkably fresh, even if many of the melodies are merely logical extensions of the songs on the group's previous effort.  This time around, the band receives some help from Toad the Wet Sprocket's Glen Phillips who gives a vocal boost to She Crawls Away as does Nanci Griffith on the haunting Earth Stopped Cold at Dawn. As expected, there aren't any real risks here, but it's a solid, comfortable album that doesn't feel tired.