Artist: Spoken Album: A Moment of Imperfect Clarity Label: Tooth & Nail Records Rating: 4 out of 10

The latest band to enter into the increasingly-crowded field of emo/punk/rock bands, Spoken heads in a more pop-oriented direction on their Tooth & Nail Records' debut, A Moment of Imperfect Clarity, with mixed results. "Across These Waters" is a solid opener, with a catchy guitar riff and a decent melody driving the chorus. Even better is the next track and first single, "Promises." It features tension-building verses that explode into a passionate chorus on which lead singer Matt Baird offers the reassuring lines, "Things will get better, this I promise you/ And I know that you won't feel this way forever." However, things don't get better from there on out, as the rest of A Moment doesn't contain anything quite so compelling. In fact, the next three songs completely bleed together, with generic hard rock riffs and unremarkable melodies sinking each. Track six, "A World Away," does provide a nice change of pace, with softer verses backed by plaintive, clean-toned guitar, but as elsewhere, the melodies are nothing special. Later songs pick up the tempo a little more, as "Learning to Forget" and "In Dreams" augment their melodic choruses with punchy verses and some much-needed screaming. The latter is the closest Spoken comes to the raw energy and passion of contemporaries The Used. But while those Bert McCracken-led rockers understand the importance of dynamics, juxtaposing acoustic ballads alongside hardcore screamers, Spoken seems to be on autopilot most of the time. This kind of music should grab you with its in-your-face rawness and palpable emotion, but it's much too easy to just tune most of this album out. Maybe in a live setting these tracks come to life, but with producer GGGarth Richardson's bland production, A Moment of Imperfect Clarity is not bad - just entirely unremarkable. While it may be better than Spoken's earlier, more rap-rock-oriented material, that's not saying much. However, if you're still looking for a new emo-punk band to tide you over until Finch and The Used get back in the studio, check out Emery, one of Tooth & Nail's latest signings. Their first full-length, The Weaks End, is out now, and it succeeds in nearly every way that this album fails. - Todd Thatcher