Pitchfork

The Cribs are three English Brothers-- Ryan, Gary, and Ross Jarman-- who have purportedly been playing together since 1989 (when they were ages nine, nine, and five). The insert from their second CD features three carefully sloppy young men, their eyes just peeking out behind stray locks, looking contemplative, chugging beer, doing headstands, playing guitar while crowd surfing, and generally bathing themselves in empty singnifiers. An album of candid songs from in front of the family fireplace seems unlikely.

None of that matters as long as they've got the tunes, though, right? They don't. The Cribs put all their cards on the table before the first track is finished. "Hey Scenesters" features good ol' staccato Telecaster angular-ass guitars, a danceable beat, and a shout-along hook, not to mention an echo-drenched vocal counter-melody for maximum catchiness. Singer Ryan Jarman doesn't try too hard, of course, lest the band reveal some trace of passion or ability. Maybe they think deriding "scenesters" in the lyrics to such a derivative song is a clever bit of irony; it's actually just transparent, and it doesn't let them off the hook.

Or maybe it's lost on them entirely. I'd believe it, given the naive mimcry of some of these songs. The Strokes imitations are frequent and blatant, though they bring a cheeky amateurism to their priacy, if nothing else. "I'm Alright Me" and "We Can No Longer Cheat You" are all slurred vowels and trebley downstrokes, but with the swaying, off-key chorus of "We Can No Longer Cheat You", it's difficult to criticise because it's difficult to even take seriously. The title track, however, borrows so liberally-- right down to the solo not-a-drum-machine drumming before each verse-- it's hard to imagine a live audience not laughing out loud.

The band seems more at home playing for punters and having them shouting in the background, with woozy bloke-rock like "Martell" and "It Was Only Love" hitting more of a comfort zone. Their sloppy pub-rock is less deserving of ire, and yet no more deserving of a listen.