Full Nine

The debut from this Toronto four-piece starts out kind of promising, with a harmlessly melodic strain of power pop that would make such bands as American Hi-Fi and the 100,000 other bands overdoing this kind of thing proud. Nevertheless, it has a couple of good moments early on, with the toe-tapper "Coffee" and the leadoff single "Not Over." And yet, the boys manage to lower themselves from under-inspiring to plain annoying when their style morphs to a carbon copy Econoline Crush’s "wall of sound guitars meets electronic backbeats” on the last third of the album. This last impression erased any apathy I had for the band and replaced it with acrimony.