Boys Like Girls was given a career jump-start by touring with Butch Walker and having an album produced by Matt Squire of Panic! At The Disco fame.

And while there are certainly bands less deserving of such opportunities, Boys Like Girls hasn’t exactly done anything to deserve it.

The self-titled debut boasts two good tracks and a lot of filler. But the two good tracks are really only good in the way dry toast is good: they’re alright, not particularly objectionable and will work if nothing else is available. But it isn’t satisfying in the slightest.

The filler isn’t bad, as far as filler goes, but it’s definitely not very good either. There’s just nothing here to justify forming a strong opinion about this band one way or another.

Frontman Martin Johnson has an impressive range, but nothing about his voice really sticks out. Guitarist Paul DiGiovanni is able to write catchy riffs, but catchy, in a very generic sort of way. The production is slick and sparkly, but that really just serves to eliminate the human element, making these songs impossible to relate to.

To be fair, “The Great Escape” is a good song. The verses are catchy and the choruses takes the song in an unexpected direction. It was the obvious choice for the first single and will probably do fairly well commercially. Unfortunately, part of the reason the song is an obvious choice for a single is because none of the other songs on the record really have single potential.

Boys Like Girls is the definitive average band. There isn’t really anything particularly objectionable here — it’s fairly safe, sticking with standard pop song structures and simple hooks — but there’s nothing really great here either. “

The Great Escape” has a killer chorus, but they repeat it too much. “Hero/Heroine” has a decent riff, but the vocals and lyrics are painfully trite. Whenever they start doing something good, they throw a monkey wrench in the gears, whenever they start down a particularly annoying path the band members manage to find one saving grace.

Which means everything hovers right around “mind-bogglingly average.”