IT'S too easy. On track two of this album, the chorus launches: "Yeah, this is a (sic) American clich" and you might as well press the stop button.

This is post-Peter Gabriel rock, mid-80s stuff and nonsense that thinks it's saying something deep.

The lyrics are poor and lack but the band tries to give them importance by repeating the same lines over and over and over again. Maybe it's the time of year that makes me so unforgiving, but as we near the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the singular failure of the music world to engage with such events is glaringly obvious - and so-called "cutting edge" rock like this baloney is a prime example of the sanitised, homogenous offerings we're being force-fed instead.

It'll play well on mid-American driving rock stations and that's more than this lethargic, unchallenging tosh deserves.

Updated: 09:43 Thursday, September 05, 2002