One can't be faulted for failing to take a band like Cartoon Boyfriend seriously... especially when your album Nipples features three naked men riding a bicycle on one side of the cover art, and three naked women on the other side.

Granted, the West Hollywood, California trio don't always take themselves seriously, either, but Nipples has enough moments on the disc to prove that Cartoon Boyfriend is anything but a novelty act. The only problem is that the group - Tommi, Holly and Boi - don't seem to know just which musical direction they want to go.

On one side, they are an irreverent pseudo-punk group who aren't afraid to laugh at the world ("Two Hicks & A Immigrant," "When I Grow Up"). But there's also a techno-rock side to this group that cannot be ignored ("Club Scene," "Little Glam Fag")... as well as a serious musical side that occasionally shows its head ("Lost In The Jungle").

Oh - and there's the techno-rock cover of Garth Brooks's "Friends In Low Places", which actually tries to stay somewhat reverent to the original version while mirroring life in southern California. It's actually well done, and should even put a smile on the faces of Brooks's fans.

But one can understand quickly how an album like Nipples can quickly get bogged down just due to the repeated and sudden changes in musical gears. In actuality, this is a very enjoyable album - much more so than I originally anticipated - that might not win Cartoon Boyfriend millions of fans, but should gain them a nice-sized following thanks to solid songwriting. All they have to do - besides drop the bonus track featuring a rendition of the National Anthem being butchered worse than Rosanne's infamous outing - is choose a musical path and not deviate too often from it. Nipples actually suggests that Cartoon Boyfriend is a band to be taken seriously.

Rating: B

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