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Whether they would admit it or not, the members of Lifehouse, whose debut effort, No Name Face, chalked up sales of over two million units, spawned the Billboard Hot 100 Single of the Year and garnered the band opening slots for everyone from Matchbox Twenty to Pearl Jam, must surely have felt at least a modicum of temptation to fashion its follow-up, Stanley Climbfall, from the same proverbial lump of clay.  To be sure, Jason Wade's estimable vocal attack still combines equal portions of Eddie Vedder's growl, Michael Stipe's mumble and Bono's tendency towards the histrionic.  Likewise, songs like the lead-off single, "Spin," shows the group wielding the same slightly dissonant, yet eminently engaging, blend of pop and rock that informed the better part of the first album.  And "Out of Breath" posits itself as the most obvious follow-on single to Face's wildly successful "Hangin' by a Moment."

The aforementioned similarities notwithstanding, the remainder of the Climbfall outing shows the youthful trio beginning to stretch things out a bit.  "Sky Is Falling" steers the group's trademark modern pop/rock sound into the slightly softer-textured neighborhood inhabited by early '70s classic power poppers like Badfinger and Big Star, while tracks like "Just Another Name" and "Am I Ever Gonna Find Out" pepper their acoustically-driven grooves with a similarly Beatlesque attention to tune.  On the harder-edged side of the coin, "Anchor" sports a grungier, wall-of-sound attribute that sets it apart from its airier No Name Face counterparts.  And the title cut skews the mostly straight-ahead melodic inclinations of the first release just enough to spark the listener's attention while still retaining the debut's undergirding sense of pop propriety - an impressive balancing act, to be sure.

Thematically, the second project sports an increased lyrical depth and insight to match its broader musical palette.  "My Precious" (A slave to your hands/ All I can do is watch you pass by) paints an insightful portrait of time as taskmaster, while the equally incisive "Am I Ever Gonna Find Out" (Everything I've seen/ Never seems to fill me now) carries with it an Ecclesiastes-like disenchantment with all things temporal.  "Take Me Away" and "Wash" (You wash over me like rain/ You crawl over me like sunshine) employ the band's characteristically spiritually-inclined language to highlight man's need for the redemptive relationship.  And the lead-off single, "Spin," (Walking, crawling/ Climbing, falling/ I found you/ And I wouldn't change a thing) mixes equal parts exultation, struggle and assurance for its succinct, but poignant, encapsulation of the stand/climb/fall triad from which the album takes its name.

Despite the impressive momentum gained by Climbfall's first ten tracks (from which the above mentioned entries are taken), the record's final four-song set effectively brings things to a halt.  "Empty Space" lumbers beneath the weight of its overly predictable chord structures, while songs like "The Beginning" and "How Long" seem to be delivered more out of perfunctoriness than passion.  And the listless acoustic rendition of "Sky Is Falling" adds little of note to its livelier, and far-preferred, electric counterpart.  Still, given the disc's hour-long run time, one could very well look at the first ten songs as a solid regular-length album in their own right and the remaining four tracks as a bonus EP of sorts.  Indeed, while the latest Lifehouse effort ends on an admittedly less than stellar note, the first two thirds of the project bear inspiring witness to the group's sizable talent and willingness to shun the safe, well-proven route in favor of experimentation and artistic growth - the sum total of which makes Stanley Climbfall a pretty fair success by just about any standard.

Bert Gangl 10/27/2002