By: Faetra Petillo
Rating: 4/11

After a breathtaking 1:20 minute instrumental intro to Zack Borer's album Home, it's kind of hard to see clearly through the dust of confusion that follows. What follows, it turns out, is nothing what the album promised but rather easy listening for the 16 and under. Or a fine first release from the latest American Idol finalist. In fact, Borer's album is such a cookie cutter replica of your average Jesse McCartney/Jonas Bro/Clay Aikin masterpiece that when he mentioned the word "fuck" during his pop ballad "Let Me Go," I actually gasped a little; such language is not very becoming of a former Hanson brother.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not painting Borer out to be an untalented hack. Just like an American Idol finalist, Zack has a strong set of vocal chords on him that sound, well, pretty. There's no other way to describe it. He's clean, he's sweet, he makes you want to skip on the beach on a warm summer's day while you longingly dream about your crush in Math class. There's a time and place for this kind of music, it's just not in my jaded innovation-seeking iPod. After many teen years spent paying my dues to the boy band circuit, I simply cannot swallow the same song played over and over again in the same major and minor chords, complete with “oohs” and “ahhhs” and “bee bops” and “mmmms” in between the structured and predictable one dimensional lyrics that can basically apply to anyone in the universe at any given point in time. When he tries to shake it up with tracks like "Amy" that have a bit of a Caribbean-reggae feel to them, all he does is conjure up that heinous Jason Mraz song "I'm Yours" which, at this point, would make anyone run screaming.

Down from the soap box now, one thing I can predict is that if the right people gets their hand on Zack Boer's Home, he will be very rich and famous and on Good Morning America and have teen girls weeping their hearts out just at the sight of him. But if I were him, I would steer clear of the underground New York City music scene, where we don't take kindly to optimism that sounds a lot like pop music. Get thee to an American Idol audition. Seriously.