The Click Five are the latest in an ever-lengthening list of would-be “power pop” bands that eschew the history of that term and instead deal in that faceless, excrementitious boy-band paint-by-numbers pop that guarantees their photos will be posted on the walls of pre-adolescent girls recently weaned off of Hello Kitty and Bratz, but ultimately does little for anyone over the age of 13.
Their sound is one steeped in all the tried and true conventions of modern alt-rock – a slap-dash of post-Green Day pop punk, a smidge of The Killers, and some synths to align them, however tenuously, with the current crop of neo-new wave groups making the rounds – all of it Osterized with a more than healthy helping of fluff to create a perfectly bland concoction devoid of any potentially threatening bits that may make their Clear Channel champions blanch and pull them from heavy rotation.
The result is starter-kit gelding rock, less “art” than a collection of three-minute bits of detritus destined to be programmed between commercials on Disney Radio and used as background music in terrible kid flicks. It is also more of an apt metaphor for the current state of mainstream music than it probably intends to be.
(Atlantic Records)
