Album: What Say You (2007)

Artist: Blue Sky Blonde

Label: Olive Drive Records

Where available/price: http://www.cdBaby.com, http://myspace.com/blueskyblondeband for $12. iTunes for 99 cents per downloaded song.

Songs: 1) Hell If I Know 2) Beside Myself 3) Solitude

4) Addicted to Love 5) One Step 6) The Same Old Story 7) Candice 8) Quality Time 9) Roll Call (The Voices Inside) 10) Tone Deaf

11) Deadly Nightshade 12) S.S.D.D.

Band: Chris Bogelln (vocals, bass), Damon Millard (guitar, vocals, bass, piano), Noby McArthur (drums, vocals), Dave Millard (violin, guitar)

Website: myspace.com/blueskyblondeband

Formerly Ten Mile Dive, "new" band Blue Sky Blonde offers a professional recording of what their press release deems "Alter Ego Rock." Alter Ego Rock, as far as I can tell, exists only in the minds of Blue Sky Blonde or the imagination of their record label's publicist. There are no references to Alter Ego Rock anywhere.

What the band sounds like to me is a combination of accomplished musicians with a shaky, unsure lead vocal. Compositions range in time and beat and stand out as sophisticated slow rock, a little on the heavier, guitar-laden side.

Most notable performances are from bassists Bogelln and Millard. In the absence of a strong voice and a lack of catchy hooks, the short guitar solos and robust bass lines take on the extra responsibility of punching up the songs, and they do fairly well.

The problem? The album is uninteresting, with one exception: their send-up of Robert Palmer's pop classic, "Addicted to Love," which the band has rocketed into a glam-pop whine-fest, reminiscent of a watered down Tsar...which is really great. The rest of the CD is a mild shade of every drudging near-metal rock band out there, from Adema to Taproot, and with record label funds and radio airplay focusing on indie rock with smarty-pants overtones and odd front man vocalists (Modest Mouse and the like), Blue Sky Blonde seems like a freefall ten-mile dive without a chute.