HOPING 'GUTTERFLOWER' BLOOMS

Gutterflower--which takes its name from a work by Chilean poet Pablo Naruda--follows the biggest studio album of the threesome's career. Dizzy Up the Girl, release in 1998, spawned a number of hits, including "Iris" and "Slide," mainstream top 40's most-played songs of 1998 and 1999, respectively. That album has sold more than 5 million units worldwide, including 3.6 million in the U.S., according to SoundScan. (The group also released a compilation, What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce, in 2000).

The pressure to follow up Dizzy Up the Girl with a worthy successor loomed large in the band's mind when it returned in the band's mind when it returned to the studio in 2001 with Rob Cavallo, who produced the album with the Goo Goo Dolls. "Things come and go so quickly in the music business now, " Rzeznik observes. "You start to question your relevance and whether somebody has already planned your obsolescence, and that's really uncomfortable.

"You have to stay in touch with why you write a song," he continues. "Why do I need to do this? It's my right to do it, and it's my privilege to make a living at it. I have a really good life. It could end so quickly that it's something you try not to attach yourself to. If the album doesn't do well, I wouldn't be devastated that I would crawl under the sink and just drink scotch and Drano."

But Takac admits he will be sad if the album doesn't produce numbers like its predecessor. "Positively, I'd be disappointed," he says. "But at this point, I don't feel like if it doesn't sell that we'd made a bad record, which I think is really cool."

Originally, the band was slated to release the album last fall but held back until it felt that Warner Bros.--which was undergoing a number of major staff changes--had settled down. "We decided, 'OK, we're gonna sit on the sidelines until the smoke clears and find out what's going on before we jump into it,'" Rzeznik recalls. "It just seemed like the prudent thing to do. I think I'm more confident now than I've ever been as far as having our record company behind us."