Skybombers

What is it about Australian hard rock bands and aviation references? The Screaming Jets in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s? Jet (the non-screaming kind, apparently) in the aughts? Now Melbourne’s Skybombers, a band of fresh-faced recent high school grads, are playing a brand of hard-edged power-pop on their debut full-length, Take Me to Town. The sound is what you might expect from kids their age — tight and well-executed, but with an unsurprising lack of a unique and singular voice, betraying their youthful inexperience.

Make no mistake: they’re hitting the right touchstones — a sprinkle of The Who here, a liberal dash of Cheap Trick there — and the performances are solid. Producer Rick Parker (Von Bondies, Dandy Warhols) has done a heck of a job polishing these guys into a well-oiled, no-frills garage-pop steam engine. The opening-chord gut punch of “On + On” is an attention-grabber, and the instant hooks provided in, well, just about every song hold onto that attention with the stubbornness of a clamped-down pit bull (or, to make that simile more Australian, a dingo chomping on the baby it’s stealing).

Still, the album rocks less in an “ohmigod they sound like Cheap Trick!” way and more in an “if I want to listen to Cheap Trick, I’ll listen to Cheap Trick” way. Give these kids a few more years, a few more tours and a few more records in their collection, and they could become a blisteringly original act. For now, though, they remain catchy, solid, fun, and downright forgettable. You’ll hum along during the first spin, but five minutes later you’ll be reaching for your copy of In Color.