If you’re striving for something eye-catching, Times Square is probably at once the best and worst place to pursue it; it’s completely congested with advertisements, of course, but still unquestionably a global stage, if the point you’re making is interesting enough. About a year ago, Brooklyn duo Ghost Beach caused at least a minor stir when they ran some cryptic messages at the New York landmark, with the aim of sparking a debate about piracy.

It’s difficult to know what it is that’s more impressive there; the band’s industry in making the effort to undertake such a protest, or their outrageous gall in thinking that anybody would ever want to steal this music. Blonde is a crushingly unoriginal piece of work, weirdly proud of its derivative nature, and anybody who wanted to listen to this kind of album could easily find a raft of better records in the last few years alone.

Opener “Moon Over Japan” runs at a little over four minutes, but feels at least twice as long. It serves as a microcosm for the record itself, in that it seems to have no real clue of where it’s going; there’s these big, dramatic synths that have underscored recent output by the likes of Washed Out and Passion Pit, without the character or pop prowess that made those acts endearing. “Miracle” introduces a chirpy guitar part to run alongside Josh Ocean’s gratingly yelping vocal, but not even a bridge that seems to aim to cross the soundtrack to an early Crash Bandicoot game with the slap-bass of the Seinfeld theme can save it from coming across as utterly bland.

Other bands that have had success in the field of this brand of calypso indie in recent years – Friendly Fires spring immediately to mind – have had a little more of a pop mentality to their songwriting; where Friendly Fires was replete with hooks and huge choruses and, say, Washed Out’s Within and Without centered itself around rich electronic textures, Blonde can only offer up weak facsimiles of both. “Every Time We Touch” and “Without You” evoke the impression of sunshine pop without actually providing any hard evidence for it; the latter track, in particular, seems to hint at an almost ska flavour, but lacks the guts to really follow up on it, leaving the listener with yet another half-baked synthpop tune.

“Been There Before” is about as good as it gets – think M83 with a palpable sense of urgency – but the listlessness of Ocean’s delivery is a long-running flaw here, a constant hindrance when you consider the fact that some of these songs are by no means disinteresting in instrumental terms. “First Time” might have an intro that sounds disarmingly similar to “Stylo” by Gorillaz, but its wonky electronics are undermined by an unnecessarily theatrical vocal turn. Ocean’s uncalled-for dramatics on closer “Too Young” are similarly unhelpful, stripping a punchy effort of much of its potential.

We’re surely well overdue a return to guitar-based territory as far as mainstream indie’s concerned, and that’d suit me just fine, in the respect that the heinous offenders on that front are at least good for a laugh. Their equivalents on the electronic pop front are, to paraphrase Morrissey, so boring that it’s almost impossible to discuss them. When bands start to rip off bands that were, themselves, brutally unoriginal in the first place, you know it’s time for a change.