Pendulum

Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro have been kicking around the music world for years working with everyone from the Bangles to the Indigo Girls. Yet somehow they have never gotten the right break or hit the right groove to make it big. The formula is in place - melody, harmony, rhyme, and rhythm - but they still fall short at the end of the race. Perhaps the trappings of the formula get in the way, leaving no room for true inspiration. It's hard to know for sure, but on Pendulum, the boys offer up some sweet tunes. The title track, "Spring Is Late This Year," "Until the Well Runs Dry," and others show them in fine form, swapping and balancing vocal parts between the husky tones of Navarro and the high timbre of Lowen. They've got it down pat, this thing they do. Even the production is as clean and straightforward as the songwriting warrants, though some risk-taking in either (or both) would have been fun to hear.