• Artist website: www.theauditionrocks.com
• Listen at: www.myspace.com/theaudition
• Available at: Amazon MP3 by late January, or your local record store.

(I know, I swore and swore that I wasn’t going to buy this album unless it was on sale at the show, but I have really low willpower when it comes to stuff like this. Besides, I found it on sale at Borders after a really bad day at work.)

This album reminds me of Santi by The Academy Is…, which means I’ll probably love it for about 3 days, and then be deeply ashamed of those 3 days for the rest of my life (see also, Infinity On High). The album has a distinct sugar-pop feel to it that is made palatable because the songs are mostly high-energy jump-up-and-down numbers that discourage serious inspection of the lyrics. The sound has the same highly produced feel as Infinity On High, but lacks the ambition and scope of the FOB album to save it from sounding like a cookie-cutter remix of everything else on the radio.

Still, I’m a bit of a sucker for pop-punk with an emphasis on pop and fun. I won’t be listening to this album a year from now, I may not be listening a month from now, but for today it’s fun, feel-good music to pull you out of the everything-sucks blues.

The Audition is playing Chain Reaction with my current obsession, Envy On The Coast, Jan. 26.