No music is completely without merit, and The Hot Melts self titled debut album is testament to this fact. On my first listen through this indie-rock/pop fest I was in a particularily good mood, and the music didn’t seem too bad. I wouldn’t stretch so far to say I liked it, but it was bearable and passed the time. The Hot Melts are at their best bright and bubbly, fun and harmless. Unfortunately, at their worst they are intolerable.Strong opener 'Red Lips' paints a flattering first impression of The Hot Melts, it’s mildly gritty and fast paced, and all in all is an ok indie rock song. By second track 'Edith', thought, the worst aspects of the album have come to bear however, recalling Scouting for Girls, or god-forbid, The Feeling in its radio friendly sing along chorus. By the third track, 'Big Baby', I consider giving up on the album, promising myself that I’d listen to it another day in order to get the required number of listens to actually be able to review the thing. With a ‘soaring’ chorus with “Ooo La La” backing vocals, it has become fairly obvious that The Hot Melts have nothing new to add to the overcrowded and homogonous world of indie-rock pop. By the fifth track, 'Fun' with its “Ba! Ba! Baa!” backing vocals, I’ve decided that The Hot Melts must be some elaborate piss-take whose joke I’m not quite in on. Perhaps a parody of some of the worst music of the decade. Any attempts to redeem the music, and give it some sort of credibility, are thwarted by the ideas being un-original, boring or just become overused, and therefore lose any interest they once had. Gritty strained vocals were ok for a bit (recalling Brandon Flowers), but it’s not exactly a strong enough feature to hold the entire record up. With the lyrics being pretty much irrelevant, and the guitars rarely playing anything but chords, the only thing that could possibly mark out The Hot Melts as special are their ridiculously cheesy backing vocals, and I hate their ridiculously cheesy backing vocals.That paragraph was perhaps too bilious, with their relentless assault of pop The Hot Melts stand a chance of brightening a room, and I must admit that once upon a time I quite enjoyed similar efforts such as The Feelings (pretty much dreadful) debut album. You could say that there’s nothing wrong with supermarket-indie, it’s mindless and sometimes can cheer up a room. But you’d be wrong because I hate this, and it makes me angry.Make up your own mind. The Hot Melts are giving the album away for free. Click here to download.The Hot Melts on MySpace