Echo Park

Mostly intended to find the bridge between bolt-rattling hard rock and swirly pop, to stand astride both California and Camden pleasing any and all citizenry underneath, Feeder's third album lacks the sort of strong bones needed to keep it all together. Grant Nicholas' "Car/Jaguar" rhymes slum with cringing Noel Gallagher-isms, made even worse by an inexplicable flood of yankophilia. It's not wholly unlike nu metal thrown back to old-time grunge middle America. When the band sounds fit, they imitate the Breeders and Dinosaur Jr. ("Buck Rogers"); when they don't, they can't prevent images of Las Vegas Sublime impersonators from saturating your brain ("Piece By Piece"). Irrelevant.