If Moxy Früvous didn't exst, somebody at the CBC would probably have to invent them. The Toronto vocal quartet pushes all the right buttons, blending folk and world music influences and writing lyrics that are both modestly clever (My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors drops literary names the way gangsta rappers drop gun names) and painfully politically correct (there's a song about the Gulf War and another about saving a river valley). It's cute enough, but there are two major problems: the harmonies are so pedestrian that the Früvoids wouldn't last five minutes in the average street-corner jam session and, for the most part, the songs are so twee, precious, and inoffensice that they make Barenaked Ladies sound like Ice Cube.
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