The thing about hangovers is, they mute and slow down everything. Reality devolves into an off-white blur – kinda like the Upper East Side. It’s certainly not a reality most people are used to experiencing or experience willingly. It’s a mental dirge of regret. In other words, you just want it to end – and end quickly.

Which brings me to the debut album of Black Bananas, Rad Times Xpress IV. Start to finish, the record is a pale mush casserole. There’s no colour, and rarely does a moment or melody stand out, even when BB liberally pilfer from others. This, of course, presents a problem given the claims made in the accompanying press release. Words like “blueprint” and “pioneer” are thrown around in description of BB’s Jennifer Herrema, the band’s singer and songwriter. Sadly, neither are really all that true. When she’s not trying (and failing) to sexify her lack of compositional skill, she’s aping the vocal styles of Joan Jett (as on ‘Killer Weed’) and Alison Mosshart (as on ‘Earthquake’). Ironically, it’s when she bothers to sound somewhat unique (like on opener ‘It’s Cool’) that a song becomes memorable – if only for that reason.

As for the music, it doesn’t fare better. For all the cries of BB being the saviours of rock, everything about this record screams insipidity. The acid-washed guitar on ‘Rad Times’ is a little too acid-washed: it’s supposed to be a guitar tone, not a pair of jeans. Even worse, its groove is lifted from Morris Day and the Time. Similarly, the guitar in ‘Do It’ is a so fuzzed-out that it’s actually distracting. But perhaps most offending of this dull set is ‘RTX Go-Go,’ with its sludgy-elastic bass stolen from modern dubstep and overall confused production. Skrillex, anyone? The record is just a series of ideas of popular music that largely have nothing to do with each other, all thrown together in the hopes that something sticks. Problem is, when reality’s covered in taupe, it’s hard to follow anything that’s going on.

The press release even tries to paint Black Bananas as the newest (and, because of this, the best) project of Herrema. In its words, the band is “fucking righteous”. Which is another lie. More accurately, it’s Rock ‘n Roll Economics 101: if it ain’t catchy or memorable, no one gives a shit. If I wanted to listen to inoffensive – and, ultimately, unmemorable – drivel (stolen drivel at that!), I’d thrown on a Kenny G record. Hey, at least his PR people never called his music a crusade.