Puddle Of Mudd
Come Clean
Geffen/Flawless
It’d be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel to brandish the always timely “this sucks” in regards to Puddle Of Mudd and their Come Clean debut, and besides • I’m much too “professional” (wink, nudge). “Fairness” or what have you, look at it this way: Do your homework • reading the liner notes and all • and you’ll discover that Puddle Of Mudd are nothing more than puppet-boys of The King of the Temper Tantrums himself, Fred Durst, who serves as executive producer here and also handles the band’s A&R (likewise, he gets first mention in their thanks list). Great. For anyone who’s had a cursory ear on modern-rock radio recently, you’re guaranteed to have heard Come Clean’s leadoff-single/track, “Control” (“I love the way you smack my ass”), and the album hardly fares any better, merely offering rewrites of that smoothed-over angst-rocker to equal or less-than-stellar effect, finding some middle ground in a punkier Stone Temple Pilots zone with equally few brain cells, effectively provoking a “why bother?” malaise in anyone older than 16 and/or with minimally discerning taste in music. Fer crissakes, these guys don’t even look like stars! Whatever. Coming to a budget bin near you a year from now, much like all those latter-day glam-metal bands did just a decade previous • here’s to the Product of Pose!
Geffen Records, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; http://www.flawless-records.com, http://www.puddleofmudd.com, http://www.whybother.com, http://www.productofpose.com
