Ahh, supergroups.
These perennial monuments to rock 'n' roll excess have a tendency to blast off in a blaze of glory and good press and then come crashing back to Earth, whether as a result of band infighting (Cream), hopeless heroin addiction (Velvet Revolver) or mediocre '80s prog-synth-pop (Asia).
It may be just as well, then, that the members of new supergroup Tinted Windows aren't so super individually.
More specifically, most of them play second fiddle to someone else in their respective main bands.
Taylor Hanson (Hanson) is the exception to this rule, and he's the frontman for the group. James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick) fill out the rest of the lineup. And they've picked a good name, something nice and bland, to go with their relative obscurity.
Iha's previous bands have had a harder edge, but Tinted Windows' music follows the rest of its members' power-pop pedigree. The band told Rolling Stone that a conscious decision was made to leave keyboards out of the album to stay true to its goal of making pure guitar-fueled power-pop.
The problem with Tinted Windows is that power-pop lives and dies on the strength of its hooks. Good power-pop infects the mind and stays there fore days; bad power-pop is forgotten as soon as its heard.
While listening to Tinted Windows, it fits more on the bad side of pop and never reaches the quality of the former.
There isn't even much musicianship on the album. All of the members of Tinted Windows have proven themselves talented musicians with their separate bands; here, however, Carlos' playing could just as easily have come from a digital drum machine. The guitar solos scattered throughout the release sound like they came straight out of a can. "Cha Cha" most closely resembles an accompaniment track from a "Learn to Play Guitar" CD.
Hanson's androgynous vocals, which were ear-catching in the early years of his first band, have descended into blandness. He may be his generation's Paul Rodgers: a capable rock singer who is almost indistinguishable from any number of others.
The songwriting could have redeemed the relatively uninspiring performances, but it doesn't. The slow-burning power ballad "Back With You" is unremarkable even among its historically formulaic peers.
The songwriters have mistaken "yeahs" and "ohs" as appropriate substitutes for thoughtful lyrics: "Can't Get a Read on You" is filled with indiscernible noises and "Kind of a Girl" kind of overdoes the "oh oh" hooks. In fact, the word "oh" outnumbers the rest of the words combined in the song.
"We Got Something" best captures the band's intentions and also features some of the best playing on the record. Hanson sounds more like himself and the guitar solo gets a little dirty, but it's still too bland.
Despite its occasional bright spots, Tinted Windows can safely be filed into the long list of reasons why supergroups are a bad idea.
Download: "We Got Something"
Grade: D
