"He falls in love with his reflection in the glass," whines singer Jacob Hoggard, about a "handsome half-wit zero", in the song "Narcissist". He's gotta be kidding, right? Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Hoggard is the self-absorbed boob who did everything short of waving his cock around on national TV on Canadian Idol three years ago? With "Narcissist" and pretty much everything else on Famous Last Words, Hedley has abandoned any effort to distinguish itself from the network of tatty Canadiana it finds itself caught up in, settling for an almost mathematically perfect melding of Treble Charger and Sum 41. Hardly surprising, really, since Famous Last Words is produced by Greig Nori, who's had plenty to do with both those bands.

"For the Nights I Can't Remember" is the first salvo in Hoggard's future career as a middleweight, Juno-friendly crooner destined for daytime television, while the rest of the album oscillates between the two stools of pop-punk and too-loud power-balladry. "Never Too Late" at least tries for ska, but it's not clear why. Perhaps even the penny-counting careerists behind this horse shit realized that almost no listener will make it through 12 tracks divided by a mere two fucking ideas. So they came up with a third one.

Link: Hedley official site