Wheatus

The world always needs tongue in cheek goofball guitar pop that doesn't take life seriously, but not necessarily lazy, half-finished sounding dirges that could have been crafted into clever pop songs.

Their love or hate factor rests almost entirely in the nasal and whiny lead vocals from Brendan B. Brown. Every single chorus is plagued with his distinct lack of range and passion, which is something of a pity because the already familiar 'Teenage Dirtbag' has a song structure that nearly resembles a half-decent tune. 'Truffles' is horrible wannabee Fun Lovin' Criminals

territory, best left and forgotten about as quickly as possible. The annoyingly plain and oft-repeated acoustic rock signatures are introduced directly from the outset and get very tedious after three minutes, let alone ten songs. 'Sunshine' adds a little banjo and countryish twangs to their palette, but its about as inspiring, entertaining and bloody obvious as bleedin' 'Cotton Eyed Joe'. The sole exception in this showcase of dross is the fun and mildly catchy 'Hump 'Em and Dump 'Em'. But even give that two plays and you won't be in any rush to ever hear it again.

Wheatus make a big song and dance about proudly trumpeting the fact that they are on a major label yet were still allowed to self-produce their debut album. That's all very well if your self-styled labour of love is something to be proud of, but this eponymous effort is a labour of cynical guitar-rock-by-numbers nonsense capable of rendering someone like The Offspring as

inspirational as the Beatles.

Utterly awful.