This album's overwhelming banality saps the creativity and mental drive from me. I fumble for vocabulary. I keep typing the words "very," "so," and "like," into this review. The most mediocre records are the most difficult to review. Give me a Rammstein or Bathhouse Betty over Silver Scooter any day. At least supremely bad records stir up hatred in my veins. Hatred's an emotion I can work with. But, baby, I'm feeling mucho ambivalent right now...

Unsurprisingly, three white guys from Austin, Texas comprise Silver Scooter. It was either there or Chapel Hill. An air of "tired barista" hangs over the band's painted portraits on the back cover. This brand of manila indie rock depends as much on sweaters, collars and novels as on guitars, bass, and drums.

They execute their guitar pop flawlessly. It's crisp. It's tight. It's produced with a cleen sheen. How boring! I yearned for any bit of cacophony, discord, rage, volume, menace, experimentation, or unpredictability. This music is vinyl siding, suburban architechture. A mini-mall may be flawlessly constructed, an exact mix of concrete, brick, glass, and neon with engineered traffic flow to allow customers to move freely from the Kroger to Mailboxes Etc. to the U.S. Hair Force with ergonomic grace, but it's still a soulless mini-mall taking up treespace. Orleans Parish exudes pure mini-mall indie.

So slide this disc into your Saturn's stereo. Drive towards the K-Mart. Now, open your windows and let the innocuous sound of Silver Scooter float free into its natural habitat.

-Brent DiCrescenzo