The Click Five
seems like such a great idea for a
pop
band that it's hard not to be disappointed that they're not quite as much fun as they promise. They're an unabashedly commercial
boy band
that can play but are nevertheless guided by manager
Wayne Sharp
who helped fill out the initial lineup of guitarist
Joe Guese
, bassist
Ethan Mentzer
and keyboardist
Ben Romans
, adding drummer
Joey Zehr
and singer
Eric Dill
to the mix, then packaging the group as band designed to translate current
rock
trends to kids that not only don't care about being hip, they're not even aware of what hip is. On their 2005 debut
Greetings from Imrie House
, they looked like a clean, commercial, unthreatening
Hives
on the cover and had strong
Strokes
streak running beneath a sound that was designed for kids who were beginning to outgrow
Radio Disney
. It was designed to be fun and it often was, although it didn't quite stick in the brain, nor did it have an impact on the charts despite tours with
Ashlee Simpson
and the
Backstreet Boys
. Such lack of commercial success offered the band an opportunity for reboot, which they seized, kicking out
Dill
and replacing him with
Kyle Patrick
and with a new singer came a new style, as
the Click Five
replaced their
retro-rock
leanings with retro-
new wave
flair -- a shameless attempt to follow fashion, but one that should be expected, even embraced, by a band that has nothing more than dreams of big hits in mind. If only the music on this second album,
Modern Minds and Pastimes
, were as big, tasteless and gaudy as
's career machinations! Part of the problem is that substituting
the Killers
for
the Strokes
means that the band relies too much on pumping wannabe anthems and layers of tongue-in-cheek retro-synths, which give the album a bit of a chilly distanced feel at odds with music designed to be teen trash, but also to be the group's strengths.
are at their best when they're at their silliest or at their most melodic, as on the over-stuffed yet sleek
"Happy Birthday"
giving way to the glorious, ridiculous
"Headlight Disco"
(its title gives away exactly what kind of retro-pastiche this is), running through the surging
"I'm Getting Over You"
(the best anthem they have here, because the chorus glides by on a big hook) and ending with
"Jenny,"
a fantastic neo-
Weezer
tune. This is genuinely fun
, a ray of sunshine compared to the stylized murk that comprises the rest of the album as
work an '80s revivalism that's big on texture but not hooks. And while
music is always about image, it also needs tunes to carry that image and
has a hard time getting enough of those tunes to make for a consistently entertaining album. It was a problem they had on
Greetings
, it's a problem they have here on
Modern Minds
-- they have a couple good songs on each, which is usually enough for any singles-oriented big
album, but the key to those records is that those singles have to be big hits in order for the not-bad, not-good filler to be overlooked. Without those big hits,
's albums seem to blend together and fade, becoming more memorable for what they're trying to be instead of what they've achieved. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine