Wow! I love finding something new – at least new to me. This is my story and review of The Click Five's new CD, Modern Minds and Pastimes. I loved it!

The Story
The whole thing was a fluke. I receive CDs and new music release information from many media representatives. Most of the time, I know in advance what I’ll be getting, however, sometimes I get an “extra” thrown in.

That’s what happened with The Click Five. An “extra” sample disc arrived one afternoon. It was “clean my office” day. Cleaning is so much more fun with music, so I put the sample disc on and grabbed my ostrich feather duster. Usually I sit still and listen to every word of every song when I’m reviewing a new release, but I didn’t think it would matter much with a sample, besides, I’ve yet to teach one of my three cats how to hold a feather duster so I multi-tasked. Halfway through the first song, I stopped dusting. I instantly fell in love with this band. I played the disc three times before I picked up the duster again. Later, I checked on the release date and made a note to download the CD as soon as it was released on iTunes. This CD was my very first download from iTunes and my very first full CD purchase. It was a great choice.

The Review
Modern Minds and Pastimes is the second full CD from The Click Five. Their debut album, Greetings From Imrie House, was released in 2005. Their music category is listed as pop, power pop and rock on their MySpace page. I usually don’t like to compare bands or artists, but my first thought after my first listen to the CD was of the close resemblance in sound to The Romantics and The Rembrandts. I agree, the sound of The Click Five does fit into the pop, power pop and rock category.

This album is fun and flavorable. What I mean by flavorable is that it’s amazing how The Click Five’s sound seems to change with each new song. A lot of times when I listen to a full album, I hear a huge similarity – almost a boring factor. I didn’t find this to be the case at all with Modern Minds and Pastimes.

I don’t know about the past of this band. I know there was a change in band members, but I didn’t research the story – on purpose. I just wanted to listen. The music, the words, and the energy made me feel light and optimistic. I wanted to skip around, it was happy music.

Please don’t think this means that the band or CD is frilly or shallow. Not at all! I can hear the work that went into this album. I appreciate the time and effort it must take to put together a completed set of works such as this project. It’s just very obvious how this group loves their job and creativity. I did go back and listen to their debut album and my honest opinion is that, yes, there is a difference, but not a bad difference and I enjoyed the first album as much as I did the second one.

My favorite tracks on Modern Minds and Pastimes are, “Happy Birthday”, because mine is in a week and I loved “Jenny”. “I’m Getting Over You” has a great rock sound and the song, “Mary Jane” actually gave me an idea for a story that I need to write as an assignment. If you want to get a nice preview of this album, check it out on Amazon.com. They have a 30-second preview of each track.

I also fell in love with a song that is not on this album, and is one of their earlier singles. The Click Five did a remake of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry”. I bought this track from iTunes and it’s incredible. Of course, you can never really top the original, but The Click Five came very close.

This was a new band to me, and I’m a new fan to them. I look forward to the relationship and I highly recommend adding their music to your collection.

Have a great week!
Chel