When he’s not loitering around the socialite scene, Sean Lennon dabbles in a hobby that should come quite easy to him — music. But the burden of his father’s legacy might explain why Lennon has only released two albums in nearly a decade.

“Friendly Fire” is a not-so-subtle concept album about the affair between his best friend and his then-girlfriend Bijou Phillips. The opening track “Dead Meat” is a vain attempt to sound menacing, but the song’s melodies are both hypnotic and catchy. It is a fair song but also sets a songwriting standard the rest of the album cannot match.

Gorgeous piano lines litter the album and inject interest into the worn chord progressions and song structures, but are not enough to convince anyone that Radiohead can’t do a better take on this style of music. The arrangements are solid though, and the melodies are unusually clever for the pop rock format. The sad, minor-key songs follow the depressing story well and add a heightened sense of drama to Lennon’s unfaithful tale.

His voice is quaint and even annoyingly sparse at times, but the cryptic keyboards and bizarre background vocals take much of the focus off of his lazy approach. It’s not so much that Lennon’s vocals are bad, they just lack any conviction; he could be singing about death or doing his laundry and it would sound the same.

“Friendly Fire” is a decent recording but it can be frustrating to hear great, original melodies enveloped in sluggish, emotionless songs.

Since Lennon releases albums about as regularly as Tool, he’ll have plenty of time to fix his insincere approach

Keith Beebe is a music critic for the Northern Star.