** Vertical Horizon

EVERYTHING YOU WANT

(RCA)

Like Benjamin Franklin, this quartet have discovered electricity. They built their grass-roots college-rock following over three records and seven years of touring as an acoustic band (à la Guster, if less interesting), but for their major-label debut, they've turned it up to 11. Not on all the songs -- at least a few, like "Give You Back," "Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning)," and "Finding Me," stick closely enough to the band's acoustic roots to forestall accusations of selling out for at least a few more minutes.

The louder snarl of electric guitars fits the group's increasingly cranky attitude, as reflected in the often bitter lyrics of lead singer/composer Matt Scannell. In a voice that mixes Peter Gabriel's world-weary rasp with Dave Matthews's earnest nasality, Scannell sings Live-like, irony-free plaints of spiritual yearning, though his passive protagonists are less questing souls than cosmic slackers waiting endlessly for enlightenment to find them. Here, then, in such aggressively resigned Bic wavers as "We Are," "You Say," and the title track, is a new genre: Soaring Arena-Rock Anthems For The Spiritually Pooped.

-- Gary Susman