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Affirmation

by Savage Garden

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Savage Garden's songs are of innocence and urgency. On the Australian pop duo's second album, Affirmation, love is either a broken thing or a newly exploding one, passion and obsession taking over after a spin on the dance floor. At the same time, when Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones proclaim that they want to "live like animals," they're not planning anything too raw, too Reznorish: they just want that childlike lack of guile. This approach, taken with a total lack of irony and with large doses of appealing melodicism, led to multiplatinum sales for the act's debut, and there's no reason to think that Affirmation won't be similarly accepted. Sometimes a bit too goodhearted for its own good--the title track's wide-eyed sentiments might make even Stuart Smalley smirk--the disc's best moments are hard to dislike when taken on their own terms. --Rickey Wright