The sophomore curse affects many artists, as they tried so hard to impress critics with their first album that a second album seems thrown out with little effort, and perhaps gives up only one or two hits.  However, Third Eye Blind have had somewhat of a sophomore blessing; although Blue doesn't have as many Top 40 radio-friendly tunes as their self-titled major label debut (that's a mouthful), it is overall a much better album.

   The first few tracks are the singles, the more poppy relationship songs, with the exception of "Anything", which is one of the most beautiful songs to hit modern rock radio in a long time.  Clocking in at just under 2 minutes, it stands as a reminder that even in this age of brain-dead hard rockers dominating the air waves, that there is at least someone who will "put together everything that's broken" in the name of romance (not sex, not a date, just the opportunity to see a loved one).  Perhaps the oddest part of "Anything"'s beauty is how simple it is; this simplicity is hidden well by distortion but betrayed in acoustic versions of the song.

   The album starts to pick up with "1000 Julys", with some fierce (for 3EB) riffs sounding like something out of the 80's.  Musically speaking, the last 7 songs on the album are by far the best ("1000 Julys" up to "Darwin"... I'm not counting the hidden track as a song), with varied tracks, and each at least sounding different (let's face it... the self-titled was nice, don't get me wrong, but most of the tracks sounded alike).  While a couple tracks, such as "Camouflage" sound somewhat unnatural (perhaps it was designed to be such), the majority of the ending tracks, from the lyrically bizarre "Darwin" (a spaceman fucked an ape? the grandson of an alien shows his reptile boots? huh?) to the almost Aerosmith-sounding "The Red Summer Sun", never bore the listener.  The most impressive of all these is "Slow Motion", an amazing track with a slow bluesy backing, and lyrics describing the darker sides of life as seen by a simple-minded person who could've come from a Mark Twain novel; such a simple track, yet this is why it works so well.  This song alone justifies the album purchase in my mind.

   If you are buying this album expecting it all to sound like the current single, "Never Let You Go", I'll have to say you will be disappointed.  Although Third Eye Blind's self-titled album was littered with poppy tunes, there are many different styles of rock on Blue.  To some this may be a sophomore curse, to others such as myself it is a sophomore blessing... the real question should be what does this mean for the future of Third Eye Blind? Will they go back to pop-songs, do more classic rock-sounding songs, or work to create more masterpieces such as "Slow Motion"? Only time will tell...