Savage Garden - Savage Garden (1997)

Savage Garden is light, catchy, and undeniably melodic, and it's hard to believe they released their debut album in the late, not early, '90s. It's easy to say that their breakthrough single, "I Want You," sounds like a revamped Roxette, but it's accurate -- it has a breezy chorus and frothy production that make it an appealing slice of mainstream pop, the kind banished from the airwaves in 1992. Occasionally, Savage Garden reach that peak elsewhere on their eponymous debut -- most notably on the second single "To the Moon and Back" and "Truly Madly Deeply" -- but they lack the vision and discipline to make the record anything more than fitfully entertaining. But those highlights almost make the album worthwhile.