Coterie Aesthete CD

When a band uses such high-school-vocabulary-list words as "coterie" and "aesthete" for their band name and debut album title, it would be expected that their target audience would consist of the sort of swots who remind the teacher that they forgot to assign the big reading list 90 seconds before the Friday afternoon bell rings. But based on the sound of Aesthete, Coterie are much more interested in the kids who race home text-messaging behind the wheel all the way, arriving just in time to catch the big Laguna Beach marathon: this is pure by-the-numbers alt-rock circa summer 2007 by a band that sounds so much like so many other bands that it actually becomes difficult to ascertain just who they're ripping off the most. They've got two singers, with lead guy Keith Conrad possessing the sort of blandly inoffensive emo-boy voice that makes him sound like every second band on Fueled by Ramen Records, and the other guy (oddly none of the four instrumentalists is credited with vocals) growling away in an even more anodyne post-hardcore bark. Underneath, the band proffer blandly efficient restructurings of deadeningly familiar alt-rock riffs and the whole thing is so ungodly boring that no one over the age of 16-and-a-half will likely be able to stay awake through all 13 songs. ~ Stewart Mason

Coterie: Keith Conrad (vocals); Kenneth Alexander, Evan White (guitar); Rory Mohon (bass instrument); Chris Desanto (drums).