The only thing Chicago's Dovetail Joint lacks in comparison to similarly styled radio-ready alterna-rock bands such as Bush, matchbox twenty, and the Verve Pipe is a distinctive vocalist and enough songs with the instant power of the regional hit single "Level on the Inside." Dovetail Joint's debut album effectively condenses the quartet's angular, melodic tunes to concise three- to four-minute salvos, each sporting a nifty hook. Taken individually, these are all pretty good slices of crunchy soft/loud emo/alt-pop, but the album falls too cleanly into its crowded genre, and ultimately the songs don't jump out, especially when heard together. Singer/songwriter Charles Gladfelter sounds too much like INXS' Michael Hutchence for anyone's good, and the rest of the band is faceless yet competent. Mixed by pro Jack Joseph Puig, the band stays fixed in a late-'90s groove far too stereotypical for the quality of its material. Everything is clean, rugged, and antiseptic, lacking a crispness to accompany the punchy choruses and robbing the music of anything distinctive. Since this was their first major-label attempt, the sense that they left nothing up to chance drains the life out of an otherwise solid bunch of songs. Only the disc's longest track, the album-closing "Lullaby," which clocks in at over six minutes, hints at a more original, slightly psychedelic sound that is all but sapped from the other tunes. It's a shame: There is talent here (at least from Gladfelter), but on the basis of 001, not enough worth the effort to search for. ~ Hal Horowitz