Pitchfork

In the sick and twisted world of 00s pop, rock bands may as well be legal stimulants: The Strokes are cigarettes; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, chewing gum; Reggie & The Full Effect, a slurpee doused with Skittles, Starbursts, and sugar packets. For the uninitiated, Reggie is the, ahem, schizophrenic twin of Get Up Kids' piano man James DeWees. He's surrounded by indie folklore and a suitable cloud of hype, which, like Reggie's earlier use of lo-fi recording techniques, attempts to obscure the shortcomings of previous efforts. Not to worry: Under the Tray producer Ed Rose strips away that fuzz like a roofer in the Kansas City sun.

What's underneath? Pure indulgence. Whether it's the driving synth juice that kicks off "Congratulations Smack + Katy" or the Sprockets-esque bounce of "Mood 4 Luv", Under the Tray remains, for its entire duration, a bottomless fountain spewing the thickest imaginable cheese-pop. Indeed, the physical need to stop Reggie from plodding past the two-minute mark, as he does on most of these songs, is difficult to ignore. As novelty, this music is momentarily intriguing, but it quickly becomes monotonous, and its sonic intensity results in a dizzying sensory overload on all but a few songs.

Rose ups the ante on production of Under the Tray, as it slips out of the lo-fi sheath that covered Promotional Copy. If DeWees and the 'Kids had responded with improved songwriting, Under the Tray might have emerged as a more captivating pop album; alas, Reggie is capable of no such effect. The guitars sound meaty, the drums spacey, and the keyboards twinkly, but the band's running on Equal, and when they finally burn out, it's not a pretty scene. It actually only took two or three seconds for "Apocalypse WOW!" to begin pruning away my dendrites, and as "Megan 2K2" rolled through 2K3 and beyond, I began to wonder why Vagrant even keeps them on the roster-- and this is Vagrant, you guys.

Under the Tray's lyrics pull all the punches you'd expect: love, roses and "posers." There are a few jokes floating around in the syrup, but I can't say I'd be caught dead dropping $14 to find them in this dreck. I suppose one wouldn't expect The Get Up Kids to break out of their saccharine mold with this particular side-outing, but it's depressing to see such a dearth of inventiveness even after a band achieves instrumental competence-- if only through the accident of age. I have a feeling Reggie and his mythic cabal will one day look back on this whole affair and wish they'd just stopped.