When Philadelphia's Free Energy signed to James Murphy's DFA records and released their debut single, 'Dream City,' last spring the template was already set. The crunchy 70's power pop riff, anthemic sing-along verses and drums that snapped in rhythm were all so rollicking and light that the only thing that kept them from floating into pastiche was the chorus, in which the party stopped and frontman Paul Sprangers sung about the fleeting nature of youth, a sentiment echoed by a rich and knowing saxophone. To sum it up: The Boys are Back in Town and they've become self-aware. While the rest of Stuck on Nothing might not reach 'Dream City's' soul-pleasing heights of live-in-the-moment wide-eyed wonder, it is a fun album full of memorable songs, which are all the more remarkable for being straight-forward guitar pop in a moment when that species has become more and more endangered.Throughout Stuck on Nothing, Murphy's production, while filled with pitch-perfect flourishes, keeps the band tuned to a strictly warm, clean AM radio rock sound. For some bands, this could be a creative damper but the cohesive aesthetic seems to free the band to focus on their strength of big hook party music. Often the riff is the most memorable component of the song, as on 'Dream City' (which made it into the Super Bowl commercials for Flip Video camcorders) and the slightly elegiac 'Hope Child.' Some, like 'Light Love' and 'Bang Pop,' each as impossibly sunny and fluffy as its title implies, are built around a sweet vocal melody from Sprangers. On other songs, for better or worse, Sprangers is all that keeps the band from sounding like a Thin Lizzy cover band. His voice and lyrics are 70's power pop as filtered through Rivers Cuomo and the level of sensitivity they bring to the album can both work for and against the band. Sprangers doesn't have a lot to say and it's hard to wring too much pathos from Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Let's Party. At its best, it's the rousing, slightly angry call and response of 'Bad Stuff' (Sprangers sings "There will come a time when it's different" and the back-up singers shout "But not today"). At its worst, it's the shallow meandering of 'Dark Trance' which is, like all the missteps here, more forgettable than offensive.Listening to Stuck on Nothing, I was reminded of The Hold Steady, another band that takes on the classic rock sound of our youths and imbues it with their own mythology. This album isn't as sophisticated or moving as Boys and Girls in America (they're kind of like the Tom Petty to The Hold Steady's Springsteen), but it doesn't really aim for it either. Free Energy is not an ironic band. Instead, their nostalgia for things not yet passed comment on their faithful recreation of a past sound. Out of a proudly Quixotic quest to hold onto youthful hope for forty four minutes and twenty six seconds longer, the band plays music that is wonderfully innocent and guileless, when it knows the world is not. If you want to pretend with them, you're invited.