Backstreet Boys

BACKSTREET BOYS
"UNBREAKABLE"
(Zomba, 2007)


"Any Other Way"


I've just completed yet another significant pruning of my CD collection (having lost my fondness for this CD and that CD, as well as getting rid of a Huey Lewis & The News album for the first time, a bittersweet occasion indeed), and this title was one of the first that I pulled off my shelf, so certain was I that it was going to be one that I would be getting rid of. But just to be sure I was making the right decision, I decided earlier this week to listen to it once more on my iPod. Well, imagine my surprise when I had a change of heart and put it back on the shelf.

I won't sugar-coat things here (bear in mind that it took months for me to really warm up to this disc) ... the Boys are a long way from their glory days of "Millennium", and this is by no means a perfect album -- its lead single "Inconsolable", aside from being just an okay song, is placed right next to a tune with a very similar bar at the beginning of its chorus, thus diluting the originality (for lack of a better word) of both songs -- but it's not half-bad either.

Apparently taking a cue from their less-than-lovingly received 2005 effort "Never Gone", the guys break up the somewhat monotonous adult-contemporary sound of that album by mixing in some of the more energetic synth-pop that made them famous a decade ago. The result is a totally listenable album in which even the dancey numbers sound surprisingly non-pretentious being sung by guys in their late 20's and early 30's.

Sure, they've no longer got Kevin Richardson with them, but they're not suffering at all from his absence. And yes, they've done better stuff than this, but they're not quite washed up yet. The ballads here are mostly so-so but with a couple of standouts ("Helpless When She Smiles", "Trouble Is"), but the upbeat numbers ("Everything But Mine", "Panic") make them sound almost as good as they did in their heyday. Maybe it's just me, but I can still hear an energy in their vocals that I just can't imagine coming from people who don't still thoroughly enjoy performing together as a group.