Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Sometimes a band puts out a disc doing exactly what it should do, not really stretching for anything great, just aiming for the center of its comfort zone and nailing it. In these all too rare cases, a listener is well advised to just go along for the ride, accept the fact that they’re not about to hear anything extraordinary, and enjoy the offering for what it is.

That’s exactly the case with self-titled debut CD from Circus Diablo. The disc is a slab of solid, blue-collar rock, conceived and executed competently, thoroughly ordinary in every way, and patently enjoyable because of all those things. Or perhaps despite them. I haven’t fully made my mind up on that point yet.

The only track on the disc that breaks out of the mould is Commercial Break. Unlike its interchangeable brethren, the song features a vaguely leftist spoken word piece in place of lyrics, delivered over an unpolished soundtrack. It’s the worst track on the disc, if for nothing else than the speaker’s attempt to sound Bohemian cool, like he’s trying out for a Volkswagen ad or something. All of the other songs, whether vocalist Billy Morrison is singing about girls, relationship troubles, or other basic rock ‘n roll stand-bys, all blend together into an agreeable, listenable, and ultimately disposable mesh.

Given the personnel in the band, with guitarist Billy Duffy (The Cult), and ex-Guns ‘n Roses/Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum handling percussion, the blandly professional product that is Circus Diablo is probably a disappointment to many. But really, this is the kind of disc that you can listen to for a while, never really pick out any standout song, never really be inspired, and still get to the end, and think, yeah, that’s a decent disc. In other words, the very definition of an average 5/10 rated album.