ightly chucking verse, big banging chorus, periodically insert lead guitar hook and presto!—we have a rocking album that rocks in an all too familiar way. Don’t rocker dudes ever get bored with themselves? Don’t they get bored with always hitting their guitars louder during the chorus? Don’t they get bored with playing those same Beatle-esque chords again and again? Don’t they get bored with humping an antiquated rock ethos?


Of course, any truly “significant” rock act doesn’t just play with their guitars; they occasionally “experiment” with technology—from the Beatles, to U2, to Radiohead—and as such, Bleu follows suit, albeit in a halfass manner. On the sluggish ballad, “Watchin’ You Sleep” we have some studio tinkering with the drums and on the even more sluggish ballads, “You Know, I know, You Know” and “Trust Me”, we have a drum machine beat and keys. Why do indie-pop acts (in this case, semi-indie pop) think shitty, unimaginative drum-machine programming is “keeping it real”? Hell, you wouldn’t want us to think you actually put some effort in creating a beat track! That might make you similar to a hip-hop or dance producer and before you know it, young people may actually be dancing and enjoying your music!! Heavens no!!! Fast! Fast! Shut off that crappy drum-machine and get back to the “real drums” and guitars! Whoa—that was a close one! Yeah, technological experimentation is kept down to the strictest minimum on Redhead. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some ultra-progressive tech geek who thinks analogue and/or traditional instrumentation has no place in the 21st Century; that being said, if you are using standard instrumentation, be as inventive in your technique as possible—in both performance and compositional terms. Come up with some new crazy way to play your guitar or keep it in its case, man. I don’t need to hear you hit that power-chord I’ve been hearing countless assholes hit for decades.


And then we have ol’ Bleu singing his non-distinctive heart out; he’s a denim and sneaker wearing “regular guy” who probably impresses the girls with his open-heart sincerity and sensitive singing. This guy can probably take Ben Lee in a fight, but that’s about it. You know, thinking of Ben Lee makes me think of Claire Danes, which makes me think of My-So Called Life, which many of the songs on Redhead would have been well suited for. But since that short-lived series was canned years ago, we’ll have to come up with something better. I got it! Let’s take the third track, “That’s When I Crash” (the catchiest song on the album; a pop rocker with an admittedly decent chorus) and create a suitable soundtrack to include it on. I see a Hilary Duff vehicle. She’s a cool High School chick and there’s some nerd who loves her—let’s say the Malcolm in the Middle kid—and he becomes a skateboarder in order to impress her. There can be a montage in which he clumsily learns the skateboarding ropes and “That’s When I Crash” can play during it. This can lead to all sorts of opportunities—WB shows, poignant moments of The Real World—there’s definitely a market for this brand of blah (no doubt, that’s why Columbia is distributing it). Maybe Redhead isn’t a particularly exciting or cutting-edge album, but it goes great with adolescent folly...well, at least the formulaic, non-threatening kind you see in movies and television.