RockRoast

Simple Plan’s choice to unpretentiously entitle their newest release “Simple Plan” was an encouraging move. I hoped it was a sign of a band reaching maturity, refreshing its sound, and reinventing itself. Then I heard the album. And I discovered that I was wrong.

I suppose there are a few moments on “Simple Plan” that are indicative of a musical branching-out. But instead of rejuvenating a tired approach to music, the band seemed to be sampling rather than experimenting. “Your Love is a Lie” begins with a hip-hop intro reminiscent of JoJo, “Holding On” is a freakish, unnatural marriage of U2 and Linkin Park, “Time to Say Goodbye” contains a few riffs that I swear I’ve heard on a Green Day record, and the chorus of “The End” sounds so much like Papa Roach that it might as well be a cover.

Despite the striking similarities to other bands, Simple Plan did use a few effects well. Two songs boast techno-inspired intros (“When I’m Gone” and “The End”), and three songs tastefully utilize stringed instruments (“I Can Wait Forever,” “No Love” and “What If”). “Generation” also involves some brass that really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.

“I Can Wait Forever” is probably the closest Simple Plan has gotten to sounding like a mature band. It’s a nice little power ballad, and, although flawed, it is certainly promising. The strings blend well with the drums and guitars, and the piano outro is a thing of beauty. To complete the sound, vocalist Pierre Bouvier manages to give an unusually emotional performance. The biggest drawback of the song could be the lyrics (“Another day without you with me / Is like a blade that cuts right through me.”)

But then again, the lyrics were a disappointment for the duration of the record. The band members are all in their late twenties now. What they don’t seem to realize is that it’s becoming embarrassing for them to sing about how you don’t know what it’s like to be them and how you can’t change them and how they can’t remember how to smile. It’s time for them to grow up. To be fair, perhaps I should mention that they did try to mix in a few love songs, but that’s not a whole lot better than the rest of their drivel. Everything they wrote about on this album has been written about hundreds of times before. They need to move on.

What I do find interesting about “Simple Plan” is that the beginning and the end of the album are very different. As you start listening, it seems like every song is a blatant attempt at another punk anthem for the rising generation. But as you finish the disc, it seems like the last few songs you’ve heard have all been hold-hands-and-sway ballads. I’m not entirely sure if that was done on purpose, but it works pretty well. The beginning is more energetic and it pulled me in. And despite some of the corny lyrics and cliché melodies, the tail end of the album lifts my spirits. When it’s over I feel pretty good about life.

So I suppose even though “Simple Plan” was disappointing for me, I don’t regret listening to it. The band clearly have a lot of things to work on and polish up, but I guess there’s always a fourth studio album for that.

Best performance: Jeff Stinco, lead guitar (especially on “Your Love is a Lie” and “Take My Hand”)
Worst performance: Chuck Comeau, drums (especially on “Take My Hand” and “Generation”)
Questionable performance: David Desrosiers, bass (I’m assuming they just had him play on three or four songs just so nobody would think he left the band)

Buy it if: You love pop-punk, you’re a hopeless emo kid, or you don’t care about the lyrics in your music.

Score: 4/10

Available at Amazon.com

Jack Johnson is the kind of musician whose work has such instant, widespread appeal that pretty much everybody has heard his stuff at one time or another—whether they intended to or not. The man is everywhere. He’s extremely prolific and continues to flood the market. By the time people are beginning to forget his last batch of songs they have a whole new set to get stuck in their heads. But if Jack Johnson’s latest release is any indication, perhaps his music is better taken one song at a time.

Sleep Through the Static consists of fourteen songs, fifty-one minutes, and no memories. It took until my third or fourth listen to even begin differentiating the tracks from one another. A few of them have started to stand out as having particularly catchy hooks or melodies and a few even stand out as being particularly bland. But the spectrum of quality and variety is about as wide as, say, one of Johnson’s guitar strings.

I suppose that could sound like a good thing—at least the record is consistent. But it is also mind-numbingly repetitive and disappointingly unadventurous. Jack Johnson’s music is easily some of the most inoffensive stuff I’ve ever heard. It can be appreciated immediately after just one listen. But it also takes no risks. And while it may not contain anything that makes you cringe or anything that is most delicately described as “an acquired taste,” it also contains nothing outstanding. Johnson sticks to his light, poppy, mostly acoustic guitar work, his bouncy melodies, and his winsome, laid-back crooning and refuses to make any effort at experimentation. Not that I’m saying his next record should be a post-metal opus or anything. But he seems hesitant to test his limits and explore his abilities, and that leaves Sleep Through the Static sounding flat and, ironically enough, soporific.

While there are a few respectable standout tracks, such as the upbeat, infectious “Hope” and the strangely uplifting “Go On,” they only stand out like a missed strip of grass on a badly-mowed lawn. For hardcore fans of Jack Johnson’s previous work, this may be a welcome addition to a collection. But for those people who have just enjoyed a few songs here and there, it’s probably best to advise you not to let one good song convince you to buy the whole album. Buy that one song from iTunes and enjoy it for what it’s worth. Listening to fourteen of these songs may—after you wake up—leave a bad taste in your mouth for something you used to enjoy.

My score: 3/10

Available at Amazon.com

The Mars Volta strikes me as a band that is nearly bursting with creative energy. In the last six years, they’ve put out four hour-plus albums. And there’s so much going on in their songs that it has to take at least ten times as many ideas to put a Mars Volta song together than it does for a song by Nickelback or 3 Doors Down. But almost as a rule, The Mars Volta has too many ideas for their own good.

Their latest CD, “The Bedlam in Goliath,” is as close to an exception to that rule as I’ve seen them get. The album-opener, “Aberinkula,” is powerful and energetic, driven by a great riff and a surprisingly catchy melody. And sadly, “Aberinkula” is also the album’s peak. “Metatron” attempts to continue in the same energetic, infectious vein, but it suffers from an overlong arrangement and an aimless, meandering vocal melody. “Ilyena” introduces a good groove, but fails to capitalize on it. Halfway through, the song is hijacked by annoying and overused vocal effects that ruin any replay value the song may have already achieved. It’s absolutely tragic.

The middle of the album continues in the similitude of the first three tracks: Each song has some fantastic melody or riff or instrumental section that is promptly ruined by some unnecessary thing the band threw in. “Goliath” sports some well-arranged music dragged down by a flat-lining melody near the end. “Tourniquet Man” starts off looking like a nice little ballad and ends up as a disturbing, futuristic cacophony. “Askepios” contains a jaw-droppingly epic section in the middle that is followed almost immediately by more distorted vocals that implore the listener to wonder exactly what mixture of drugs was used during the recording and production processes.

“Ouroborous” marked a refreshing return to the untainted energy and musicianship of the front end of the album. This is followed by the nine-minute “Soothsayer,” which again uses bizarre production on the vocals. But this time the weirdness achieves a priceless haunting tone and only aids in the construction of a beautiful, if somewhat drawn-out arrangement. “Conjugal Burns” seems to be a decent closer, but it is plagued by two serious problems: First, a minute or two from its conclusion, the song bursts into a section of unprecedented hideousness, a kind of unimaginably freakier incarnation of “Faaip de Oiad” from Tool’s “Lateralus.” Second, the album seems to end mid-riff, leaving the listener hanging, waiting for that final note that will never come. While it might be a clever trick for the band to play on their fans, it’s frustrating and painfully unsatisfying.

And, of course, it goes without saying that the entire seventy-six minutes of “The Bedlam in Goliath” is marred by impenetrable, indecipherable, incoherent lyrics that are often laughable in their imagery and metaphor-mixing. But despite containing some of the same frustrating aspects of The Mars Volta’s last few albums, “The Bedlam in Goliath” succeeded in getting me hooked on a few of their songs, something their previous work had never accomplished. “Aberinkula,” “Ouroborous,” and “Soothsayer” are new favorites of mine. I have to give the band some well-earned respect for making their own kind of music on their own terms, but their unabashed idiosyncrasies continue to bother me.

But this latest release was significantly more digestible, at least for me. I’m optimistic about the direction The Mars Volta may be headed in. And if that direction results in a realization that weirdness for weirdness’ sake and nonconformist idiosyncrasy in the name of personal expression are not inherently advantageous, then I will be the first in line to buy their next album.