Newest release causes some confusion

Every Sunday afternoon at the community center auditorium nearest you, a group of middle-aged music lovers — often in mod, hippie or rocker costumes — gather and jam out a set list heavily influenced by a classic rock mixtape procured with only two easy payments. And oh boy, if you close your eyes, it feels just like the real thing.

Darker My Love, a frustratingly talented L.A. quintet, drifts dangerously close to this territory on Alive As You Are, its disappointing third LP. After a somewhat promising eponymous debut album and a less promising second album, this derivative dud does little to inspire confidence in the future of the group.

The problems are evident from the opening notes of “Backseat.” The song is an American Beauty-era Grateful Dead folk-rambler that stalls at its halfway point where somebody had penciled in “guitar solo.” The rest of the song is actually very enjoyable, but the stock guitar work in that middle section is blatantly lazy. The more glaring problem is the complete lack of inventiveness. It doesn’t sound like a tip of the hat to their influences; it sounds like a ripoff.

The Rolling Stones receive the band’s sincerest flattery on “18th Street Shuffle,” and the Kinks are imitated on “New America.” There’s nothing wrong with the band  name-checking its idols, but without innovations, there’s nothing to distinguish the group from the pack.

It’s ironic and slightly sad the cuts that sound most like Darker My Love songs, which fall somewhere on the scale from original to modestly referential, are the weakest links. “Split Minute” hints at a hook that never materializes, and the repetitive and inappropriate synth riff detracts from serviceable lyrics.

Then there’s “Dear Author,” a shrug of a rocker that manages slight novelty by existing as an amalgam of the band’s other influences. A less annoying song would have cut the two-word drawl chorus, but then you’d just have “A Lovely Game,” a less annoying song.

In the thorough 2010 rock-doc You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1877-1984, aging musicians and former punk scenesters bemoaning the death of “true punk” hit on an important caveat for, really, any musician. When asked about the state of punk today, one former Chicago studio musician responded, “I’m not supposed to like what you do. I’m almost 50 years old. You should be doing something that’s really gonna annoy me.”

Yes, he was talking about punk specifically, but it’s applicable to current music. Bands are breaking ground, making noise and getting out there, but other bands, often popular and even talented groups, do nothing to deconstruct aural traditions. To the innovators who came before them, that has to be really frustrating.

Frustrating. That’s maybe the best word to describe Darker My Love’s discography as it stands. Guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Tim Presley is more than capable of creating original tunes, as proven by his best work with former band the Nerve Agents and Darker My Love.

But on the weaker tracks from the first two DML albums and essentially the entire third album, he seems more dedicated to conceiving adorable tributes to his heroes. That’s a great way to start a garage band with your buddies. It’s a terrible way to fulfill the promise of your stronger work.

To be fair, the aforementioned promising Darker My Love material was always on par with that of the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre. What made its prior albums different, especially its first, was a smooth combination of the former group’s creativity with a pinch of the latter group’s swagger. On Alive As You Are, creativity is inexplicably scant, and swagger is nonexistent.

The hope would be that this entire project is a fluke creative misstep. By many accounts, the band’s live performances are enjoyable affairs, and some of these tracks might gel better alongside choice cuts from the first two albums.

Darker My Love is certainly more talented than a cover band led by cool uncles, but if it chooses to straddle the line between reference and pastiche, it’ll have to work harder to stay relevant.

Hey, there’s always some bill space between Fred Zeppelin and Stone Temple Co-Pilots. But the guys from Darker My Love are better than that.