V

If you’ve been harboring the desire to hear Live’s bald-headed-Brahmin-of-bathos Ed Kowalcyk rap, you’re a sick fuck. Nevertheless, Kowalcyk grants your demented wish on Live’s imaginatively-titled fifth album, V. “We hit the room/ Me and my crew/ And it was cool/ Until we bumped into you,” he rhymes to open “Deep Enough” in a nasally patter that makes Fred Durst sound like Chuck D. If that were V’s worst offense, we could ignore it and move on, but unfortunately the laughing fit it provokes is the album’s high point. Save for the hysterical couplet on “Transmit Your Love,” “You didn’t, now you’re wishing that you had/ Had to go to Jimmy Buffett with your dad”—which simply has to be an intentional joke—the rest of the album finds Kowalcyk and his, uh, crew, so full of their overly-serious selves, it’s sad. Lines like, “In the East/ they can meditate…In the West/ we think we’re the best,” push Live’s spiritual shenanigans past the point of self-parody, and the band’s dull modern-rock bombast just makes it worse. Somebody please stop them.