Many rock bands have enlisted the masterful ear of Bob Rock to produce their music in recent musical history. Rock bands like Metallica, Kingdom Come, The Cure, Amrican Hi-Fi, Motley Crue, and Veruca Salt just to name a few. Montreal, Canada's Simple Plan are the most recent band to try and get some of the magic from Bob Rock on their current release "Still Not Getting Any". So, is it the producer, or the band that really create the music. The answer is both. Simple Plan's second disk is good, as far as content is concerned, but then there's the sound that actually gets brought to the forefront by Rock's masterful ear. 

The world was first introduced to Simple Plan with No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls, that CD was produced by Arnold Lanni (Our Lady Peace, Finger Eleven), and the difference is very evident. On "No Pads", Simple Plan sounded almost identical to the other "power-pop" bands blasting from teens speakers, including Blink-182 and Good Charlotte (the latter being the band Simple Plan will be co-headlining with on tour), and no real presence of their own, just the same-old!

Bringing Bob Rock to the picture gives Simple Plan their own presence. True, part of it may be a "bit" of maturing as far as songwriting, but the rest is clearly due to the influence of Rock. The teen angst that overpowered "No Pads" is still there, but this time around the band actually rocks. For the power-pop or punk-pop music lovers this should be a no brainer, but for the rest, myself included, we needed to hear more depth, more originality, and here it is.

From the beginning of "Shut Up", Simple Plan show they can build catchy radio-friendly tunes as well as anyone, and it continues. The subject matter may be old hat, but the way it is put forth this time around shows that even with the predictability, Simple Plan can still deliver the goods in the ways other bands simply wish they could. Pay more attention to the tracks "Welcome to My Life" and "Everytime", then you may see that Simple Plan have added some more credibility to their music. Still Not Getting Any shows me that if a continuous forward movement is attempted, Simple Plan may just be one of power-pops very limited success stories. Great hook laden, and radio friendly power-pop that the teenage set will for sure gravitate toward. The additional DVD is good for fans of Simple Plan, but the documentary of the "making of", pics and lyrics are not for everyone. 

  ( 4.5 Stars out of 6 )

Play MP3 sample of "Shut Up" by Simple Plan

Play MP3 sample of "Everytime" By Simple Plan