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O.A.R.

"All Sides"

(Everfine/Lava/Atlantic)

Uncertainty and reassurance make for a busy tag team on "All Sides," the sixth studio album by O.A.R. It's a familiar arrangement in modern rock, and Marc Roberge, the band's singer and songwriter, embraces it. "Hold on," he urges in the refrain of one relationship-maintenance tune. "I'm on my way back home," he promises in another one. Then there's "On My Way," which closes the album and raises a question: Does Mr. Roberge have any new songs about being, you know, right where he's supposed to be?

If he does, he excluded them, in keeping with standard practice. O.A.R. specializes in a sound that could be described as aspirational; there's a reason the band was tapped to provide the theme for ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." This album in particular involves a lot of earnest fretting about making things right, or just better. That impulse elicits at least one allusion to current events, but even then Mr. Roberge manages to preserve an air of generic yearning. ("Wait for my love," he advises in "War Song." Presumably he would add that he was on his way, if he could.)

Because of its college-town origins and reputation for stretching out onstage, O.A.R. has occasionally endured reflexive comparison to the Dave Matthews Band. (Both groups also feature a house saxophonist and an avid tape-trading fan base.) "All Sides" ensures against such a fate, but for the wrong reasons: Mr. Matthews and his crew usually keep things more interesting than this. O.A.R. deserves credit (just a bit) for easing up on its trademark faux-reggae, but the alternative surely didn't have to be so prosaic.

Unless those are the only terms this band can truly deploy. "Shattered," the album's lead single, suggests almost as much. "How many times can I break till I shatter?" Mr. Roberge cries. Then, an admission doubling as a pledge: "I always turn the car around." NATE CHINEN