“Let’s form a band! We’ve got a guy who sounds like a bad imitation lounge singer, so we’ll mostly play third-wave ’ska-punk’ and ’swing’ music. But our bassist can sorta slap and our guitarist has a Metal Zone pedal, so we’ll add funk and metal and grunge to our set too! Then we’ll toss out some incompetent stabs at mediocre AAA pop somewhere towards the end of the record, and some harmonic-laden cheese solos on our dramatic, brooding emo-ish numbers. Who’s down?”

Aren’t these bands supposed to die sometime around the time the majority of their members head off to a private college of their parents’ choosing? How come I’m sitting in a coffee shop (’cause they’ve got wireless!), listening to the end product of what must be years and years of perfecting an armload of slimy, stagnant turds-of-songs– arranged in the studio, polished on the road and recorded on one of the least inspired, least necessary, most annoying “live” records ever produced?

And why didn’t the barrista who played this get eliminated in the pre-employment hipness screening process?