Music Review : Simple Plan

Author: Izarrudin
Category: Music
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Wednesday
Mar 12,2008

For Simple Plan, the name says it all. This Montreal quintet, which has peppered MTV’s “TRL” with several quasi-hits over the past five years, sticks to a predictable formula in achieving its pop-punk sound.

You begin with a nasally yet emotive vocal, build up to a three-chord chorus featuring crunchy guitars, and layer the lyrics with just enough faux cynicism.

In the band’s native French Canadian: Voila! You’ve got an emo hit. The group’s third full-length album, the simply titled “Simple Plan,” offers glimpses of something more, but invariably falls into to the same old pattern.

“What If” begins with a bold orchestral sample before the line, “What if I graduate / What if I don’t?” sends it clunking back down to earth.

“Generation” picks from a range of favorable influences (the Who’s “My Generation,” the Ramones’s “Blitzkrieg Bop,” even the Dandy Warhols’s “Nietzsche”), yet never really emerges from the land of diluted imitation.

One has to give Simple Plan credit for something, however. Not since Adam Sandler summoned “The Wedding Singer” has an artist paid such tribute to the ’80s.

With its Journey-esque, fist-pumping “No Love,” the Richard Marxian ballad “I Can Wait Forever,” and the “Livin’ on a Prayer”-style “Whoa-oh’s” that dot its “When I’m Gone,”.