Puddle of Mudd - Famous

Blurb
My my, how the strong have succumbed to the powers of radioplay. PoM's earlier releases 'Life On Display' and 'Come Clean' were both pretty good, but this album has little going for it. Short of the title track, and a couple of other songs that distinctly remind you of older songs, you miss nothing here.

'Famous' sounds like a sped-up version of previous hits 'Control' or 'Away From Me'.. the rest of it just contains generic, radio-friendly tunes. 'It Was Faith', 'We Don't Have To Look Back Now' and 'Psycho' are decent ballads. They finally go back to their grunge-ish roots on 'Merry Go Round', which is what you always expected from PoM. 'Radiate' is good, but only because it sounds so much like the old classic 'Blurry' - if it were a song by another band they would definitely be looking at a plagiarism suit!.

I like Wes' voice, but it does get repetitively irritating - either they go back to the old stuff they did, or else he finds something more creative to do with his voice, and the band's sound.

Track Listing
1. Famous
2. Livin' On Borrowed Time
3. It Was Faith
4. Psycho
5. We Don't Have To Look Back Now
6. Moonshine
7. Thinking About You
8. Merry Go Round
9. I'm So Sure
10. Radiate
11. If I Could Love You

Overall Rating
I am very very disappointed by this. The lineup change has not added any value whatsoever to this band. If they don't tour extensively to support this album then I would expect this is it for PoM, the end might be blurrily near. This is only a 5.5/10.