Lets Be Honest… EP

Atlanta quartet the Status aren't going to make the girls swoon with their moody impatience, volatile nature or billy-goat face scruff. They're not rebels. They're more the clean-shaven, earnest-type pitching big chords and choruses that resolutely reside on the right-half of the punk-pop spectrum. The music swells from the verse to the bridge, and emotions are offered up like shiny, flashy trinkets for Show & Tell. In that way they resemble Relient K and We The Kings, with a excess of energy and hooks to cover for any lack of nuance or grit. That said, their pop is polished to a shiny sheen without seeming pre-fab, and the pulsing melodies entrance like the lights on a carnival midway. There are even moments on last year's full-length debut, So This Is Progress, that hint at more (cf. "The Wake Of What's Been Done").

Their four-song Let's Be Honest… EP doesn't dramatically remodel their formula, but offers the same glimmer of great potential in the album-closing "Don't Think We Can't," which slackens the tempo and allows more wiggle in their ringing guitar caboose. The anthemic, we-shall-overcome ballad boasts some of their best guitar work to date, balancing a catchy melody with some elegant lead work and tasty guitar crunch.

The rest is more by the book, and much less arresting. The title track is the serious talk that follows the musician's return home from KISS's "Beth," powered by a perky rhythm and a nondescript major chord melody. "Heart And Soul" starts with an entertaining swirl of guitar that resolves into another aching emo-pop jangle of guitar, posited against a chugga-chugga bridge that boasts a little muscle. However, it's not enough to salvage a clichéd "giving you all I can" lyrical thrust fit for the heroine of a Lifetime movie. It's a sentiment repeated ("doing all I can" to be a better man) on "Christmas Time," which again bemoans romantic ache, in this case a separation made more dramatic by the time of season. It's reasonably well-written, with a pleasing break, in which everything but a lightly picked guitar drops out before building to a resounding, sing-along finale.

Jon Bon Jovi was the first to suggest melodramatically that touring is as lonely as being an outlaw, and the accompanying ache isn't any more sympathetic in the hands of the Status' singer Ben Grant. It's pleasant enough to listen to–they can fashion a decent hook–but more often than not, there isn't much behind it. They play well enough to suggest some promise, but there's more to a gift than the wrapping, and enough on Let's Be Honest… to suggest they can do better. Here's hoping their next full-length can fulfill the promise of "Don't Think We Can't" rather than simply reprise the same well-trod ground.

Doghouse http://www.doghouserecords.com