CRASH KELLY

Like a Gilby Clarke solo record or an ENUFF Z'NUFF career retrospective, CRASH KELLY dredge up pleasant enough associations with their warm, summery hard rock sound. They take as many cues from CHEAP TRICK as from ALICE COOPER, they write songs tailor-made to be championed by the type of radio DJ that no longer exists, and they wear their retro-happy, born-too-late influences on their sleeves.

And, like Clarke or those hapless Z'NUFF lads, they just can't seem to tie it together. There are a few moments of candy-coated genius on "Electric Satisfaction", usually involving tasty twin-guitar leads (the opening few seconds of the album would almost have you believing you were in for a THIN LIZZY-inspired shredfest). But the whole thing is mired in this hard-to-define generic miasma — the songs are just kinda there, and vocalist Sean Kelly lacks both the charisma and the range to put them over the top.

It's almost unfair to review CRASH KELLY at all on a hard rock website – their music betrays just as many power-pop influences as crunching chords. Hell, "You're a Drag When You're High" could be a SMOKING POPES song (ten bonus points for any metalhead who admits to remembering, or liking, that band). It's like the band can't decide if they want to be indie pop tunesmiths, swaggering glam queens or Seventies riff rockers, and they end up stuck somewhere in the middle, unable to commit — or convince. Their album-closing cover of "Cold Ethyl" just highlights their lack of cojones — Kelly may be a better singer on paper than Alice Cooper (hell, so's my grandma),but Cooper's got "it," and that's why he's still around after thirty-plus years. CRASH KELLY don't have "it".

CRASH KELLY aren't technically a bad band. But "competent" doesn't cut it for this kind of rock and roll. There's no soul to "Electric Satisfaction", nothing that'll stick in your head for weeks, no riffs to make you nod your head. It's possible that the band turns up the intensity live, but that doesn't change the fact that when this record is over, it leaves no impression – or reason to ever play it again.