Jim Boggia, Safe in Sound

With pop savants like Jon Brion, Jason Falkner and even Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile making sure to do everything themselves, a performer like Jim Boggia comes off as a phenomenal slacker, contributing nothing but vocals (a cross between Richard X. Heyman and the Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson), guitar and the occasional keyboardy instrument to his own album. That’s not the reason Safe In Sound ends up a disappointment, though; as any pop nerd knows, the key is always songs, songs, songs. The fast numbers, like “Made Me So Happy” and the supercharged “Underground” (which pits an Attraction against one of the MC5 and comes out a draw) get by not on hooks or invention but on momentum, and slower cuts like the dithering “Show My Face Around” and “Where’s The Party?” (which sounds like the perfunctory gathering chronicled at the start of Weezer’s “Undone”) are just plain dreary. The result is similar to Bleu’s Redhead but without the three or four undeniable songs that made him so promising, lazybones or no.