Simple plan, simple music

Pop-punk hybrids have always had a place in the hearts of America's "TRL" culture. An ancestor of this modern breed is Green Day, though Blink-182 has captured the crown in recent years. Unfortunately, bands hoping to imitate the success consistently come up short.\nEnter Simple Plan, a Montreal quintet whose debut album sounds like a mix of Blink-182, A New Found Glory and Good Charlotte, but without any edge or variety in song structure or content. The first single on No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls, "I'd Do Anything," is engineered for top-40 radio, including a guest spot from Blink-182's Mark Hoppus on vocals.\nThroughout the album, Simple Plan wears its influences on its collective sleeve. Joel Madden from Good Charlotte guests on "You Don't Mean Anything," and lead singer Pierre Bouvier does a dead-on impersonation of A New Found Glory's frontman Jordan Pundik. The homogenous, nasal vocals rarely alter throughout the 40-minute, 12-song slate, which might seem to last a few songs too long for its quality.\nThe group's lyrical ability is definitely in question. All band members are in their young 20s, but the content often comes off as softly as an Aaron Carter song. After hearing the chorus for "Meet You There," which sounds surprisingly like O-Town's "I Want It All," one has to wonder if this album was made entirely for the preteen following that their predecessors already enjoy. Lyrical ability ranges from cut-and-dry ("I'd Do Anything") to circumspect ("Addicted") to downright awful ("My Alien").\nThe album's high point comes at the right moment -- on the closing track, titled "Perfect." Bouvier displays genuine emotion in his vocals, even though the subject matter is still somewhat juvenile. The song spells out a theme hinted at throughout the album -- Bouvier's strained relationship with his father -- as in the lines, "I just want to make you proud / I'm never gonna be good enough for you."\nOverall, the album comes off as a lump of power pop that's worthy of toetapping but little else. In the end, the name says it all: simple music for the simplistic listener.