Tomihira, Play Dead

San Francisco songwriter Dean Tomihira challenges audiences to find just one song they like on his eponymous band’s debut full-length, Play Dead; indeed, they may have difficulty even telling where one song ends and the next begins, so consistent is Tomihira’s muse. Tomihira counts Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine among his chief influences, but his songs have neither the suicidal melancholy of Joy Division nor the mechanistic power of My Bloody Valentine. They’re just mild, midtempo guitar songs, polished into smooth, harmless oblongs of pop. Play Dead is never offensive, never irritating, never even really boring — but edgeless material makes for poor hooks. The remaining hints of buffed-out corners on songs like “Pillbox” and “Color of Destroyed” suggest that Tomihira might do better to choose as his model someone like Silkworm, or the Wedding Present, or the Pretenders, all of whom have made multiple records full of midtempo guitar songs that are relatively inoffensive, but far from tame.