You gotta love the title track on this album with its acoustic guitar intro and its amusing line about “ladies from Marin” leaving the singer with “blisters on my skin.”

In the chorus, the tune shifts into an anthemic tribute to the City by the Bay with Train vocalist Pat Monahan singing, “I been high/I been low/ I been yes and I been oh hell no/I been rock and roll and disco/ Won't you save me San Francisco.” And variations thereof.

The second tune, “Hey, Soul Sister,” is even more commercially catchy, with its happy handclaps, its cute little ukulele plinking away behind Monahan's pure tenor vocal. Some members of a certain generation, though, have to laugh at its rather dated

reference to the '80s pop band Mr. Mister.

This whole CD is of a piece — one super-hooky radio-ready pop song after another with a decidedly West Coast bent, especially on tracks like “Breakfast in Bed,” a valentine to the Golden State with its lyric, “California/Dancing in the ocean/How I love you/Better wear some lotion/Sun is shining/Nothing compares to you.”

The band shows a lot of class with its nod to the influence of Tom Johnston and the Doobie Brothers, beginning and ending the song “I Got You” with the Doobie Brothers' “Black Water.”

This is the fifth Train album and its first after a hiatus of three years. It's being billed as a reunion, and it may be for

Monahan, guitarist Jimmy Stafford and drummer Scott Underwood. But it's a reunion without former Novato resident and Train co-founder Rob Hotchkiss, who launched the band with Monahan in 1994, playing memorable shows at Sweetwater in Mill Valley. Hotchkiss left after the Grammy-winning success of “Drops of Jupiter” and now lives on Vashon Island, west of Seattle.

Train is a good band without him, but it was a great band with him.

Buy It: “Save Me, San Francisco,” Train, Columbia; $9.99

Tell us about your band! If you're a musician or band from Marin or Sonoma with a recording that readers can buy or download, send your CD and contact information (if you have an upcoming gig, let us know that, too) to Press Play, P.O. Box 6150, Novato 94948-6150.