Tinted Windows: Tinted Windows

For better or worse, Radio Disney acts like Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers have spurred a backdoor revival of power-pop. Though the production is now slicker and the sentiments more juvenile, much of today’s tween-targeted music is still high-energy and guitar-driven, and not too far removed from the “songs about cars and girls” ethos of the original power-poppers. This is both good and bad news for Tinted Windows, a supergroup featuring Fountains Of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos, former Smashing Pumpkin James Iha, and Hanson’s Taylor Hanson. Tinted Windows’ self-titled debut is a buzzy, thumping, rousingly tuneful set of songs about broken hearts and adolescent need; it’s as wonderfully shallow and cleverly arranged as the classics of the genre. It’s also largely indistinguishable—superficially at least—from the soundtrack to any given scrubbed-clean summer-camp movie. That’s largely due to Hanson, who has a strong but grit-free voice, trained since boyhood to sound uncomplicated and unthreatening. Still, the more weathered gentlemen pounding away behind him keep the volume so loud and the rhythms so snappy that it’s hard to complain much. Whatever the intended (or actual) audience, songs as catchy and spirited as “Messing With My Head” and “Without Love” are timelessly fun.