On the heels of 2002's enormous hit "Wasting My Time,"
Default took another shot at platinum by releasing
Elocation, an album of predictable mainstream rock. Things get off to an uneven start with "Who Followed Who?," which finds the group nicking the powerful drive of
the Bangles' "Hazy Shade of Winter" and gluing it to any old
Nickelback tune. Speaking of the latter,
Chad Kroeger helped put
Default on the map and naturally is back to help out, co-penning "Throw It All Away," which aside from its title is one of the few tracks worth salvaging here. Not so for "(Taking My) Life Away," co-crafted by Bryan Adams colleague
Jim Vallance and layered with the same type of formulaic chorus that bolstered "Wasting" at radio. Sadly, there's little originality in palatable numbers like "Movin' On" and "Throw It All Away" -- mostly because lead singer
Dallas Smith sounds like an anonymous mixture of the aforementioned
Kroeger,
the Offspring's
Dexter Holland, and
Creed's
Scott Stapp. Sure, the band plays as astutely as, um,
Creed or
Nickelback under the watchful eye of producers
Rick Parashar (
Pearl Jam,
Rhythm Corps),
Butch Walker (
Sevendust,
SR-71), and
Kroeger. Although
Default's bastardized cover of the
Jeff Buckley classic "Cruel" is brave, it's also misguided, leaving the simple devotional tune "Without You" as the most memorable on
Elocation.