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Sugar Ray Cautiously Optimistic About New Album

Despite previous hits, pop-rock quintet unsure of fan reaction to refined sound, more mature lyrics of '14:59.'

You'd think playing to thousands of adoring fans, having one of the biggest hit singles of 1997 with "Fly" and selling truckloads of albums would inspire a bit of confidence in the members of pop-rock quintet Sugar Ray.

You'd be wrong.

"I'm a little frightened," drummer Stan Frazier said, reacting to the release of the group's third album, 14:59, which hit shelves Tuesday (Jan. 12). "I hope everything's going to be fine, but we've never been in this position before.

"My nephew and his friends already taped [the album's instant-smash single 'Every Morning'] off the radio already, and they're like, 'We've already got the song.' And I'm like, 'Now, go buy the record, you little bastards.' "

Frazier's trepidation is understandable, considering the band's history.

Led by the pin-up-worthy singer Mark McGrath, the Newport Beach, Calif., group includes guitarist Rodney Sheppard, 31, DJ Craig "Homicide" Bullock, 27, bassist Murphy Karges, 31, and Frazier, 30.

Sugar Ray went from being a critically demeaned, lite-metal/funk-pop curiosity to slightly less-demeaned chart giants with their previous album, 1997's Floored, which contained the breezy "Fly" (RealAudio excerpt).

Now, the group is entering into unknown territory.

Its new album abandons much of the overwrought, hard-edged sounds of Floored and its 1995 debut, Lemonade & Brownies. With a few exceptions, 14:59 traffics in a more refined, '70s-pop sensibility on songs such as the fluffy "Someday" and "Ode to the Lonely Hearted" (RealAudio excerpt).

The group also branches into dark funk on "Live & Direct," with a cameo from rapper KRS-One, and tries a Devo-like, '80s techno-pop homage on "Personal Space Invader."

"I think there's been an evolution of the band on all three records," McGrath said. "We sort-of started out with a party-atmosphere vibe, and we became better songwriters and players in the meantime."

McGrath said the changes undergone by the group's members between the recording of Floored and 14:59 -- a flood of life experiences including world travel, unspecified deaths and marriages and the sort of shopping sprees common to budding rock stars -- contributed to more mature songwriting.

Not everyone in the group is as concerned as Frazier about the fate of 14:59.

"Everything from here on out is gravy," Sheppard cracked last month prior to the new album's release. At the time, the group was riding high on the news that "Every Morning" (RealAudio excerpt) was one of the most added radio tracks of 1998. The song rapidly leapt from 1,094 spins during the first week of December to more than 1,900 the next, according to an Atlantic Records spokesperson.

With help from producer David Kahne (Soul Coughing, Sublime), Sugar Ray didn't just explore a more melodic sensibility with 14:59. They made some other serious changes that, Bullock said, would convince naysayers that Sugar Ray are here to stay.

"When people hear it, they'll know there's more than one song on it," Bullock said, pointing to the failure of Floored's second single, "RPM." "They'll give us credit for progressing and being capable of writing good music."

That said, the bandmembers said they are inordinately proud of "Every Morning." McGrath recalled that the first time he heard the song's hook, he knew it would have to be the album's first single. "I just said, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever heard,' " Bullock added.

Built from a beat Bullock created and a melody that Frazier said came to him "from nowhere," the song is a chronicle of infidelity and male guilt -- more mature, serious themes than one would expect from the band's previous work. It's evident that "Every Morning" is one of the first attempts by Sugar Ray to write songs about difficult-to-maintain adult relationships.

"We're not afraid to say, 'I love you,' where we used to say, 'I want to f--- you," McGrath explained. "But we won't bite the hand that feeds us, either. We found a niche, and that's not easily done. Getting mass appeal for a band is a really hard thing to do."

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