Same way fans of "The O.C." darlings and Like-colleagues Rooney get shocked that guys prettier than the Backstreet Boys can wield and play their own instruments, L.A.'s the Like make it way too easy to over-credit the super-cute threesome for the couple of catchy minutes they could've just chanced upon. Still, it's just as easy to under-credit them-- they're no Coppolas (bosom buddies, though), but dismissing them as lucked-out industry offspring's a piece of cake, too: Bassist Charlotte Froom is daughter of producer Mitchell Froom; drummer Tennessee Thomas is daughter of Pete Thomas (drummer for Elvis Costello); vocalist/guitarist Z Berg is daughter of Geffen hotshot/producer Tony Berg. They're living teen-girl pipe dreams, straight-out-of-another-teen-movie plots: the Crossroads classmates started up in 2001 at the ages of fifteen and sixteen-- Charlotte had been playing bass for two weeks-- are buddies with uber-pretty boys Maroon 5, Rooney, and Phantom Planet, and have really great legs.
Jump to whatever conclusions, but thank God, anyway, they're not a shemo band playing bitter-bitch rock; if we're to die at the hands of the Like, it'd be something like death by mosquito net-- Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? is a bundled-up, gauzy deathtrap of the prettiest of bug-deterrents. The hiccupped sweetness and light of Berg's pipes draws apt comparisons to the Sundays' Harriet Wheeler; her lower-ranges drop into sexed-up, Bjork-like bottom-scraping; it's all terribly charming.
Too bad lyrics are straight from soporific bio class margin-notes-- initials in hearts, Mr. So-and-So, Mrs. Actually. "June Gloom" could be as glumly endearing as any Throwing Muses tune, if it weren't for its cited sunsets and hazy grey skies, trite as the stuff of Freddie Prinze films ("Wish that I could save you/ Wish that I could stop this"). The Like never turn saccharine, but seldom delve much deeper than recess romances: "Bridge to Nowhere" and "You Bring Me Down" are the dreamiest of gripes-- "I can't be who you wanted me to be"; "Once Things Look Up" is typical Like-- just courting ideal, stopping just short-- and catchier tracks sometimes teeter close to excellent: See "Falling Away", poised to morph into Republica's "Ready to Go", like some woozy tilt-a-whirl that won't make you hurl chunks. "Waves that never break" sums it up best-- Berg sings, "Break me or something/ 'Cause I'm fading away/ Am I waiting for nothing?", all the while we're waiting for some killer hook that never comes. ("What I Say And What I Mean", the closest the Like ever get to a memorable pop single, sounds perilously akin to Ashlee Simpson's "Boyfriend".)
But maybe Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? is all it professes to be: misunderstanding, indecision, ambiguity. Here's miscommunication, talking past, boys not getting the difference between what girls say and what they mean; here's oft-thought sentiments like the ones on "Under the Paving Stones": "Hey haven't you heard you have the right to make a move?" The Like would do best to heed their own advice-- take a few risks of their own.
