CD Reviews: Backstreet Boys, Built to Spill
Backstreet Boys
"This Is Us" (Jive Records)
1-1/2 stars
The newest CD from the Backstreet Boys features a number of uptempo, club-sounding songs – but the weak effort from this quartet won't have you running to the dance floor.
"This Is Us," the group's seventh studio album, is full of boring, uneventful tracks – though hitmaking producers like RedOne, T-Pain, Jim Jonsin and Ryan Tedder help out.
What may be most disappointing is that Swedish producer Max Martin – who helmed classic grooves for the boy band like "I Want it That Way" and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" – fails to present anything as addictive on "This Is Us."
"Straight Through My Heart," the lead single, is too average, as is "She's a Dream," a poorly written love tale. The worst is "PDA," where the boys claim they will be "kissing, touching with my hands all over your booty" at Starbucks, the club, restaurant, grocery store, movies and beach. Stop. Please. Thank you.
At times, the production of the songs proves to be too powerful – pushing the boys to the background, especially on the Britney Spears-sounding "Masquerade."
The group should have recorded more songs with Claude Kelly, Soulshock and Karlin. Those producers work on "Bye Bye Love" and "If I Knew Then," the only standouts on the dragging "This Is Us."
---
Built to Spill
"There Is No Enemy" (Warner Bros.)
3 stars
It may be that "There Is No Enemy," but Built to Spill's latest album has such a melancholy vibe, there may as well be.
Decidedly darker than 2006's "You In Reverse," the Boise quintet tones down its trademark guitar-driven rock on its seventh CD. "Enemy" is still a rock record, but the tempos are taken down a touch to carry frontman Doug Martsch's musings on mortality and the meaning of life.
He opens "Done" with "Loneliness is getting hard to perceive/Seems it never comes or it never leaves," and closes with a refrain of "It's already done, it's already done."
"It doesn't matter if you're good or smart," he sings on "Things Fall Apart," a languid tune punctuated by a lone happy horn.
Martsch's high-pitched voice is downright haunting on "Oh Yeah," a track marked by dramatic drums that melts into a psychedelic guitar-driven interlude reminiscent of vintage Pink Floyd.
But all is not hopeless. Guitarists Brett Netson and Jim Roth, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf get upbeat on "Good of Boredom" as Martsch sings, "Most of my dreams have come true." On "Nowhere Lullaby," a slow track rich with reverb, he concludes "everyone gets through the night and everyone wakes up all right." He takes the sentiment further on the album's cheeriest track, "Planting Seeds": "We can make it if we try/If we don't it's still all right/Because your mind is still alive."
"There Is No Enemy," but according to Built to Spill, there's still plenty to think about.
