With a fan base built up and members putting on the years, many bands see their third album as an occasion to assess the direction they?re heading in and shake things up. On Simple Plan?s new self-titled album, the plan for this coterie of pop-punk Quebecois seems to have been to throw out much of the sound they built their name on, with lead singer Pierre Bouvier instead embracing the wide-eyed ?American Idol? contestant inside of him. The band has enlisted a team of industry producers on this outing ? most notably Timbaland prot?g? Nathaniel ?Danja? Hills ? and a bag of studio tricks has been rolled out, giving Simple Plan?s already radio-friendly sound a ProTools spit shine.
This new direction begins with the album?s leadoff track and first single, ?When I?m Gone,? with Bouvier ratcheted up in the mix, synth strings plucking away in the verse and AFI-like backup ?woahs? in the chorus. The song is perfectly competent powerpop, but there?s nothing to really sink your teeth into except the catchy hook at the end of the chorus: ?If misery loves company/ Well, so long/ You?ll miss me when I?m gone.?
More interesting is the musical schizophrenia of ?The End,? which makes one immediately visualize the producers holding a clipboard and checking off how many markets the band can appeal to in one 3 1/2-minute song: trance-y electronica intro, check; vocoder-harmonized vocals, check; melody that would sound great slowed down to half-speed and sung by Justin Timberlake, check. There?s even a requisite anthemic build-up, a Nickelback breakdown and a cathartic 30-second outro for good measure. Despite this kitchen sink philosophy, however, the song?s elements somehow all cohere together.
Another standout track is the planned second single, ?Your Love Is A Lie,? which stakes out play in the radio market with a slick acoustic guitar sample and melodic turns-of-phrase, with an echoing mic ripped straight out of Avril Lavigne?s playbook. Perhaps best of all, ?Take My Hand? lets drummer Chuch Comeau go full My Chemical Romance throttle on his skins as punchy, staccato lyrics plead that the listener ?Take my hand tonight/ One last time.?
Once the album starts spinning into the second half, however, it soon becomes apparent just how horribly frontloaded this affair is. Perhaps Simple Plan assumed few listeners would listen all the way to the end, as the album quickly becomes a graveyard of shallow, platitudinal sentiment and experiments gone wrong.
The balladeering in the verses of ?Holding On? is an aberrant musical mutation, lying somewhere between Pure Moods and the theme song of the old school Nickelodeon cartoon ?David The Gnome,? with some walkie-talkie Linkin Park vocals periodically thrown in for good measure. Additionally, ?I Can Wait Forever? features nearly boy band levels of over-earnest crooning behind a piano line and a few strums from a reverberating guitar.
And the choruses become repetitive, stale and devoid of any interesting hooks. On ?Holding On,? Bouvier tepidly promises, ?Wherever I need/ Wherever I want you/ I know where to find you.? ?No Love,? meanwhile, is the same exact song, except with the sentiment flipped around: ?There?s only lies/ There?s only fears/ ? There is no love here.? The song?s verses, meanwhile, feature some of the most brilliantly constructed lyrical monstrosities of recent memory: ?Staring out/ Into the world across the street? and ?Looking down/ Like a mirror smashed to pieces.?
Bigger than these problems is the fact that these lyrics show no emotional growth. The members of Simple Plan met in grade school, and if ?What If? is an indication, they haven?t progressed much beyond those years, with Bouvier wondering, ?What if I can?t go on without you/ What if I graduate??
Simple Plan might have temporarily snagged a few more tween fans for the band, but with the average age of its members nearing 30, their expiration date seems to be coming up all too soon.
2 stars out of 5
