Dogstar's press kit goes out of its way to immediately mention the attention being paid to the young group due to the presence of, "a certain movie star" - and then adds that it's, "finally time [to let the music of Dogstar] speak for itself."
Yeah, right.
The full-length Our Little Visionary kicks-off with the blessedly-short "Forgive." Despite a superb Ed Stasium production job and the blatant theft of a Gin Blossoms riff, melody and feel - the grafting of Brett Domrose's cookie-cutter alterna-vocals over the sludgy mess dilutes whatever opening punch the band hoped to achieve with the track.
The second tune, while just as Nixons/Seven Mary Three forgettable, at least isn't as embarrassing as the group's ham-fisted, semi-sacrilegious cover of Badfinger's "No Matter What." In fact, the only good point about the inclusion of this rote version of the power-pop classic is that the estate of the late Pete Ham stands to gain a bit of cash out of the deal.
"Breathe Tonight," "Nobody Home," "The History Light," "Honesty Anyway," "And I Pray," "Bleeding" and "Goodbye" sound exactly like what's playing on your local modern-rock radio station at this very second (although "Honesty Anyway" does, to its credit, boast a semi-decent riff); while "Enchanted" and "Denial" attempt to add a bit of hard-edged heat to the proceedings - and, instead, wind up sounding like The Best Kissers In The World with a drum roadie filling in on vocals.
Not as flat-out horrible a record as the three-piece's live performances would lead you to expect (Keanu's bass chops have improved, Domrose, despite his very Joe Generic vocals, doesn't play a bad guitar and drummer Rob Mailhouse slams a decent set of skins) - the fact that the group's sound is virtually interchangeable with that of a dozen other fairly homogeneous bands fouling-up the charts makes Our Little Visionary an instantly-forgettable collection of for-the-masses noise.
Product in every sense of the word - the four track "Quattro Formaggi" is an enhanced CD that features: a Rick Parashar Pearl Jam-ination of "Honesty Anyway"; two unexplicably familiar alternabashes; one lyrically inept, sensitive-guy acoustic track with strings; an outstanding, interactive CD-ROM that lets you choose between bus, backstage or live footage; and a 12-sided Dogstar catalog that includes four hat designs, four stickers, a poster, 11 different T-shirt styles and fan club information.
