Band: Hot Chelle Rae

Album: ‘Whatever’

Release Date: Nov. 29

Label: RCA

Decibels: Who cares/5. It’s whatever. (But really, it’s a two.)

Sounds like: LMFAO, but serious

 

Hot Chelle Rae joined party rock pioneers LMFAO as trailblazers of this generation’s mock-pop groups. At first glance, it seems like a band with acute self-awareness of the rock star lifestyle that isn’t afraid to takejabs at its own fame.

There’s just one problem: Hot Chelle Rae isn’t actually in on the joke.

Ryan Follese and company’s latest album, ‘Whatever,’ combines the unabashed sleaziness of Ke$ha with the self-deprecating wit of Gym Class Heroes, but they lack the talent the artists possess. Instead, the band chooses style over substance by adopting a slacker identity and lazy songwriting. If ‘Whatever’ was an ice cream cone, it would be vanilla — it only tastes good when you really crave ice cream, it’s bland and sticks you with a bad case of brain freeze.

Opener ‘I Like It Like That’ sounds like a Ke$ha song minus the campy entertainment value. The verses are cringe-worthy and teeming with overblown pop culture references, but the chorus has a massive hook that would be perfect if this was a summer album. It’s hard to get on board with lyrics like, ‘Hey, windows down / Sun so hot, make the girls take it all off’ trudging through 40-degree weather. It doesn’t help that little-known rappers New Boyz jump in halfway through to lay down a Lil Wayne-style verse that even Weezy would be too embarrassed to take credit for.

From the sloppy falsetto in boring ballad ‘Honestly’ to the Rascal Flatts wannabe ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’ it’s clear the band members cobbled the album in such a slapdash way for one reason and one reason only. They struck gold with one song.

‘Tonight, Tonight’ is a supersized summer single with an enormous chorus. The band tackles its relentless case of apathy with a bridge of infectious ‘la, la, las’ and charm. But for all of its Top 40 clout, only that track and take-on-the-world anthem ‘Forever Unstoppable’ stand out on the record.

Even songs with promise get ambushed by guest appearances that are both insufferable and unlistenable. ‘Radio’ is a toe-tapper pop song that shines with early Maroon 5 aesthetics and a sunny demeanor — at least until rapper Bei Maejor seizes the microphone with an abrupt flow that tries, and fails, to be a poor man’s Travis McCoy.

Has-been Disney starlet Demi Lovato joins the group on ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’ with the intentions of recreating the acoustic magic cast by Boys Like Girls and Taylor Swift on ‘Two is Better Than One.’ Her yowling voice overpowers Follese’s nasally monotone, proving that maybe nothing is better than anything at all in the case of the track that tugs the heartstrings.

Most of the album has plenty of party but almost no rock. The club-bumping ‘Beautiful Freaks’ could have been a faux-pop masterpiece in the hands of LMFAO, but Hot Chelle Rae take themselves far too seriously to tackle a synthesizer-heavy, 80s-style jam that might as well be a joke.

And that’s the big problem with the band. Songs meant to be loaded onto a summer playlist and taken on a road trip to the beach aren’t remotely fun. The album is split in two, divided by songs too serious for their own darn good and those too busy not trying at all. The title track is a tongue-in-cheek ode to apathy — but why should fans sing along and raise a glass to not caring about anything?

That’s not to say Hot Chelle Rae needs to either ditch its party-all-the-time attitude or stop taking its music seriously. But unless the boys in the band don’t want ‘Tonight, Tonight’ to be their one-hit wonder, they need to pick their pop-rock path and stick to it.

Or not. It’s whatever.

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on November 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman