t’s funny for such a mediocre band to have such a dynamite website. Flash graphics, sound, talking band member cartoon heads. I assume they got the dough to pay for the design from their nearly platinum selling (in the US) debut album Last Time You Took Me Back. Feeling that the debut was a bit overwhelming, the band decided to follow it up with this “snack-size,” five song, 15 minute EP.


Although from the City of Brotherly Love (which always conjures up images of the Sixth Sense when I think about it for some reason) the band has a sort of New England swagger. Stone Cold look-alike lead singer Jason beguiles his appearance by singing in anything but a brash inflection. Comparing himself to the lead singer of Loverboy (a band whose LPs I have passed up many-a-times in my scrounging) and the others to Night Ranger (guitar), Bow Wow Wow (drums) and Romeo Void (saxophone), (yes, this release the band enlists “Mark” to their lineup to further bolster the ska comparisons) the band has an obvious predilection towards poppy 80s bands. And rightfully so. The band picks up where these bands left/fell off and throw in their own simple, laid-back, punk groove.


The vocals are what my mother calls “sort of talking, not singing” and she’s partly right. On the idiosyncratic and characteristic “Swiper of My Heart” details an infatuation with an athletic club clerk and has Paul sputtering out cheesy couplets, at one point even poking fun at their banality by rhyming “dance” with “Spain,” only to have “France!” yelled out in the background. The failed Beastie Boys homage/send-up/ape “Windows II” is embarrassingly sad in its attempt, and one hopes it was just a one-off experiment. The band excels best at the slow, grooving punk-pop like that of “Best Thing Yet,” with its labored vocals, off-color lyrics (“My friends say I should be over you / They say find someone else to do”) and saxophone interjections.


I think I’ve found myself in the position where it is difficult to really call the album “bad” per se, but the same is true on the other end. Lyrically--dull, musically--a mixed bag, signs of future potential—sure.